[booleanbetrayal]

I don't understand how this thread went from something like #10 on the main page down to #186 in a matter of an hour, despite being more active than most of the threads it is competing with. Can someone more familiar with HN rankings explain this one to me?

[pseudalopex]

Submissions with too many comments for their votes receive a penalty. This is to stop flame wars.

[booleanbetrayal]

I suppose that could make sense. It's still rather unfortunate, as this is a concerning development that could probably use some more awareness around it.

[mrguyorama]

This system was designed decades ago "To stop flamewars" and not been changed or fixed or improved in any way despite a drastically changing internet and world.

The purpose of a system is what it does, especially when chances to change or improve that system are ignored.

Similarly, HN is for "interesting discussion" which is why "politics is banned" even though it is explicitly not because the one time we tried to literally ban politics it was self evident how stupid, unworkable, and self defeating of a policy it is, and it lead to zero "interesting discussion", but whatever hype fad is popular right now fills the entire board to capacity at all times, with nothing more than the standard talking points either way, and somehow the 37th post about "AI slop but by a different Substack account nobody has heard of before" is interesting discussion.

"Too many comments for their votes", which is not made transparent to us because god forbid we understand why things happen in our community.