[ilugaslifg]

Judging by the upvotes and timestamp on that story (90 points, 4 hours ago), and not being able to find it on at least the first 3 pages of HN (for comparison, there's a story on page 3 with 33 points, 22 hours ago)...

That was one of those threads which just gets opaquely disappeared off the front page.

Which is something I've been noticing happening a lot lately. Really big turnoff from participating in this site.

[tobltobs]

> for comparison, there's a story on page 3 with 33 points, 22 hours ago)...

The ranking algo might be a bit more sophisticated.

[ilugaslifg]

Sure, but that's not all. Or maybe it is -- who knows. Certainly not you or I, because the only information that is public is the score and the date.

The problem is the opaqueness of it

Which leaves a lot of room for the appearance of capriciousness, and sometimes even (though not so much in this case, this is not nearly that consequential a story) malice.

http://sangaline.com/post/the-stories-that-hacker-news-remov...

[chc]

You can't just compare points because flags don't affect points while they do affect ranking.