And at any rate, #1 on HN is not the product of any simple rule like "most upvotes per unit time with some decay function applied." There is significant judgmen

And at any rate, #1 on HN is not the product of any simple rule like "most upvotes per unit time with some decay function applied." There is significant judgment in expressed in the way that stories are ranked. The source code as of 2012 was enough to demonstrate this, but in my understanding yet more judgment has been applied since then. https://github.com/wting/hackernews/blob/master/news.arc https://github.com/wting/hackernews/blob/master/news.arc