Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why this is on the front page in the #11 spot? It has 4 points and it's 45 minutes old.. The HN rankings system continues to confuse me.

--

Clearly its getting overwhelmed with HN traffic. Maybe click throughs are included in the rankings calculation? Then again, if many people are clicking through and then not up voting it, it's not necessarily a positive thing.

I do think it's pretty cool though! Great job.

View on HN

Saturdays are probably the low-traffic day on HN. I remember pg saying once that Wednesday was the peak day. It's possible the algo compensates for a lack of traffic. Fewer submissions might affect the decay of popular items.

I think a lot has to do with the people doing the up/down voting. I'm guessing HN members who have been here longer and/or has more comment karma, carry significantly more weight when up/down voting.

This would explains why such a low score would result in a post staying in the front page for so long. So even though the points maybe 4 from a cosmetic point of view, I'm guessing its actual score would be much higher due to the 4 HN members that voted up this post.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com