One thing that prevents us from actually implementing the algorithm is that there is some "secret sauce" to HN rankings that is not publicly available. There ar

One thing that prevents us from actually implementing the algorithm is that there is some "secret sauce" to HN rankings that is not publicly available. There are flags, vote ring detectors, domain penalties, the second chance queue, and other means by which HN moderators change the rank of stories. And these make a *huge* difference. Our initial implementation of an alternative ranking algorithm was not an improvement over the existing HN home page for this reason.