4 ms·

Thanks for the reply, I'm sorry for the off-topic discussion, it's just that I witnessed several times how a thread is doing very well (like 50 points in 10 min

Thanks for the reply, I'm sorry for the off-topic discussion, it's just that I witnessed several times how a thread is doing very well (like 50 points in 10 minutes), is in the first places on the FP, then in a minute it's on the bottom of the FP, in another minute it's on the third page. So I though it must be the flaggings. Is HN's ranking algorithm public?

pzxc 11y ago
If a topic gets 40 comments before it gets 40 votes, it gets auto-penalized even with no flags. (too controversial) There are also other mechanisms, such as vote-ring-detection, that can kill a topic as well. (That is my current understanding anyway, I am not HN staff, and I am not saying whether I agree/disagree with any of these mechanisms, just stating them to help alleviate your confusion about why some topics may be doing very well and then suddenly die -- it's not always because of flagging)
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  > If a topic gets 40 comments before it gets 40 votes, it gets auto-penalized even with no flags. (too controversial) I've heard about this before and it still sounds crazy to me. I comment quite a bit, and almost never upvote topics. Using the standard "other people are like me" heuristic, I deduce that the normal operation of HN involves automatically killing all the topics. It's more likely that other people are in fact nothing like me, but I'd like to understand this a bit better.
throwawaymaroon 11y ago
Of course it isn't. This place makes a few gestures in the direction of openness without ever making any meaningful commitment. Another way for a thread to fall off the FP is if there are lots of comments. Lots of comments means passion which means we might be seeing a flamewar, and negative feelings of any sort are bad for business: therefore, mindless algorithmic demotion.

4 ms·

Thanks for the reply, I'm sorry for the off-topic discussion, it's just that I witnessed several times how a thread is doing very well (like 50 points in 10 min

by jakobdabo 11y ago

pzxc 11y ago
If a topic gets 40 comments before it gets 40 votes, it gets auto-penalized even with no flags. (too controversial) There are also other mechanisms, such as vote-ring-detection, that can kill a topic as well. (That is my current understanding anyway, I am not HN staff, and I am not saying whether I agree/disagree with any of these mechanisms, just stating them to help alleviate your confusion about why some topics may be doing very well and then suddenly die -- it's not always because of flagging)
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  > If a topic gets 40 comments before it gets 40 votes, it gets auto-penalized even with no flags. (too controversial) I've heard about this before and it still sounds crazy to me. I comment quite a bit, and almost never upvote topics. Using the standard "other people are like me" heuristic, I deduce that the normal operation of HN involves automatically killing all the topics. It's more likely that other people are in fact nothing like me, but I'd like to understand this a bit better.
throwawaymaroon 11y ago
Of course it isn't. This place makes a few gestures in the direction of openness without ever making any meaningful commitment. Another way for a thread to fall off the FP is if there are lots of comments. Lots of comments means passion which means we might be seeing a flamewar, and negative feelings of any sort are bad for business: therefore, mindless algorithmic demotion.