[venning]

I can't find the source for this but, as I recall, HN has a system where certain new or recent submissions are artificially promoted to a low position on the front page for a few minutes to see if they gain traction naturally. Also, I believe that some people (perhaps just dang and sctb, I don't know) can manually add to the pool of submissions that the algorithm will randomly draw from to temporarily promote. They don't have the power to push them directly to the front page, only to give them a chance to be selected for a few moments of spotlight.

Forgive me if I got some of that wrong, or if the system as a whole does not work like than anymore. Not exactly what was asked, but maybe helpful to someone.

EDIT: Closest source I can find: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9866140

It references a long comment from dang three years ago regarding this as an "experiment": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8790134

[solarkraft]

It seems like HN ranks a lot by recency. I have seen articles with 40 or so points high on the front page and of course highly rated articles need to leave it at some point.