If I was a salesman, I would explain that easily: 1. If the material is newer and already has attracted the same amount of negative votes in shorter period tha

If I was a salesman, I would explain that easily: 1. If the material is newer and already has attracted the same amount of negative votes in shorter period than another one in longer period -- the first is worse. Push it down. 2. If people suddenly started hating something very much, that might mean the content is hot and attracts a lot of attention. So pull it up. "thinking out of the... emm, where is my box???" ------------- Imagine two submissions, submitted 5 seconds apart. Each receives two downvotes. seconds is larger for the newer submission, but because of a negative sign, the newer submission is actually rated lower than the older submission. Imagine two more submissions, submitted at exactly the same time. One receives 10 downvotes, the other 5 downvotes. seconds is the same for both, sign is -1 for both, but order is higher for the -10 submission. So it actually ranks higher than the -5 submission, even though people hate it twice as much.