Post got hit with controversy penalty. Controversy In order to prevent flamewars on Hacker News, articles with "too many" comments will get heavily penalized a

Post got hit with controversy penalty. Controversy In order to prevent flamewars on Hacker News, articles with "too many" comments will get heavily penalized as "controversial". In the published code, the contro-factor function kicks in for any post with more than 20 comments and more comments than upvotes. Such an article is scaled by (votes/comments)^2. However, the actual formula is different - it is active for any post with more comments than upvotes and at least 40 comments. Based on empirical data, I suspect the exponent is 3, rather than 2 but haven't proven this. The controversy penalty can have a sudden and catastrophic effect on an article's ranking, causing an article to be ranked highly one minute and vanish when it hits 40 comments. If you've wondered why a popular article suddenly vanishes from the front page, controversy is a likely cause. http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really-works.html?m=1 http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...