[culturalzero]

Not to go tin hat here either, but it seems very weird that just a few hours after this was submitted, it has by far the most upvotes and comments on hacker news, yet is near the bottom of the page. I wonder how much manual influence YC puts over their actual topic rankings.

[grzm]

A high rate of comments can work against a submission as it can trigger the "overheated discussion detector" which is used to work against flame wars. User flags (which suppress ranking even before the [flagged] tag appears) as well as mod weighting can affect ranking.

From the FAQ:

> How are stories ranked?

> The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted. Comments in comment threads are ranked the same way.

> Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which downweights overheated discussions, and moderator intervention.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

[triggermuch]

being aware of ways to manipulate content is not being tin hat, i would love to be good at that kind of data manipulation, I admire it, sometimes its used for bad but i admire it, its real.

tin hat would be that its being done by some wierd cult of secret members that have a goal of making us unisex slaves to serve the elite few (which no one can agree on anyone in this group, Lady Gaga is apparently one of them, (how are people this dumb and not dead from their stupidity is something my OCD freaks out on)

I wish i saw the data the way that some do, I just make it neat and in order. we gotta stop the retaliation and jealousy of someone getting something we didnt. You will never get that satisfaction. Make life better for you, and just hope they get hit by a car and let it go.