You must be a Catenoid, because that's exactly what a Catenoid would say.

As much as I appreciate humorous replies to my question, I'm serious. What makes a new article appear on the front page?

I saw some hitting the front page with much fewer votes than others. What's the mechanics in play here?

Tachyons' job. It had been taken to frontpage to get enough votes to appear on the frontpage. If you can see that from the out-of-time perspective, it makes sense.

Edit: Sphere here.

If there were publicly specified rules for getting to the front page, then people would game them.