Only with direct link, you’ll notice it’s suddenly not on any of the first 10 pages despite being one of the most, if not the most, active threads during that time. I can keep clicking to see if it’s on the 20th or something, but if that’s the case, would be helpful for HN to explain that behavior as well to avoid us attributing it to maliciousness in the future.
It (the post) received only 38 up-votes in the three hours it has been up.
Since story ranking for the front page appears to be in part based upon number of up-votes per unit time, it is very possible that only 38 votes over a three hour period was simply not a fast enough up-vote rate to keep it on any of the first X pages below the front page.
Very helpful info on the low quality indicator. I would personally disagree but that’s my opinion and I can see how it would be useful running a forum like this. Any chance HN has made public any additional detail on forum behavior like that?
I don't think the exact threshold is public, but it often seems to kick in when there are more comments than upvotes. The term to search for is "flamewar detector". Dan has quite a few comments that offer a little more information: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
In general, the usual request is that questions like this one are better handled as an email to hn@ycombinator.com than as a new thread. Dan is surprisingly responsive and usually willing to provide details if you ask.
Hmm. Why then do I see so many item comments blasting the media as "biased a particular way" and dismissing articles outright with derision? I see a lot of knucle-dragger-signal comments brigading like this, and it's disappointing.