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Why is this story showing on HN, whilst the following one (on the breakup of Google) has more points, and was previously top of the HN front page? https://news

by cbeach 12y ago

Why is this story showing on HN, whilst the following one (on the breakup of Google) has more points, and was previously top of the HN front page? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8666921 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8666921 Interestingly the above story has comments that are far more scathing about Google, whereas the story I am now commenting on, which HN has favoured has mostly arguments in defence of Google. What's going on, PG?

_wmd 12y ago
It can happen due to 1) significant numbers of users flagging the link, 2) the admins demoting it, or 3) it attracting too many comments too quickly ("controversiality"). It seems likely 1 and 3 happened here, but due to a lack of transparency it's always impossible to rule out 2.
- cbeach 12y ago
  It may be "controversial," but it is also big news and very HN-worthy. Disappointing to see that HN's algorithms are so trigger-happy
  - davidw 12y ago
    The resulting discussion is mostly not very interesting though. Maybe the algorithms are doing a better job than we thought!
lumberjack 12y ago
The controversial posts brought on a lot of upvotes/downvotes that triggered the flame war detector and buried the post.
wfjackson 12y ago
Most likely it got penalized by the flamewar detector, since it had many more comments than points. http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really-works.html http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really... Also, dang is in charge now, not PG.
dang 12y ago
I think it's just a dupe that we missed and that got lots of additional attention.