This site scrapes Hacker News once every 30 minutes, then sorts according to this formula, with upvotes as positive signals and comments as negative ones. In my experience, the best articles to read on HN are the ones with a high upvote-to-discussion ratio. Mostly because controversial pieces tend to produce a disproportionate number of comments compared to upvotes.
Interesting thesis. The current listing didn't convince me there's any merit to it.
I might check this site out more often if it included the HN front page ranking and a green/red up/down arrow showing the relative diff.