https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19321609 This for example should be #1.<p>Is it because of people flagging the submission or what is the explanation for this?
Nobody except the site admins knows the details, but from various comments that have been posted here, I believe it is the case that a few factors come into play. The mods may manually adjust the ranking of certain stories for various reasons, and there may also be algorithms that adjust rankings based on things like the ratio of votes to comments (or the inverse), and probably other factors that none of us know about.
When rank reaches double digits, makes it to the first page and then suddenly drops like a rock - this is manual intervention by admins.<p>Likely due to the bias toward the story.