At the time of writing, [1] has 81 points, 200 comments, and was posted 2 hours ago, but is currently #43 on page 2 of HN.<p>Meanwhile, [2] has 14 points, 1 comment, posted 4 hours ago is at #14 on the front page of HN.<p>What's going on here?<p>--------------------------------------------------<p>[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14487788<p>[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14485477
Please see <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html</a>.
I have no idea and for all I know, dropping it wasn't a choice of the moderators but a mistake or an unforeseen outcome of some algorithm, but if they did drop it on purpose I support the decision. There are countless other websites to debate that stuff on, I would rather have fewer of the incendiary, purely political discussions make it to the front page of HN.<p>Come to think of it, I do recall hearing something about how HN's algorithm nukes topics with tons of commenting but not very many votes, so it is probably that.
Sometimes moderators downvote posts that are inappropriate for HN even though people may like the content. This is really important for keeping the community decent because the crowd does not make good decisions for the future of the community. My guess is the post encourages an anti Harvard circlerjerk or something stupid about memes.<p>If you've been on Reddit for a while, you would understand that the moderators having that power here is a good thing and that curating content is the only way to keep an online community from becoming a sensationalist hellhole.
HN seems to do this with some regularity. I have made similar posts once or twice, noting how a link that is less popular in all metrics is substantially above another.<p>Mods almost surely have a weighting button, though I don't know if your question is affected by it.
Huh, it appears this this tread has also been buried. Either there is some algorithm edge case going on or that Harvard thread got <i>really</i> toxic.