How Does HN Work?

Question

I am always surprised to see some stories in the frontpage with less than 10 votes, as of this moment we even have stories with 3 votes in there. At the same time I've seen some stories go unnoticed with 9 votes in the "new" section.My assumption is that some users have enough karma to post directly to the front page, but I wonder how many votes does a story need to get promoted. Is the algorithm documented anywhere or is it secret? Is there more to this than just karma?

mtmail · Accepted Answer

Especially in /new some users use multiple accounts or ask friends to upvote (I think that's called a voting ring). You'd see 9 votes but not all are counted. There seems to be a public number and a hidden "real" number for scoring. Another factor seems to be speed: a story receiving lots of upvotes in the first X (10?) minutes ends up on the homepage faster than one receiving one upvote per hour. Lastly those with 'Ask HN' or 'Show HN' in the title have different behavior and need less upvotes for their respective pages. Certain users (with high karma? or account age?) having more power is an interesting theory, I haven't noticed that yet. But I saw "Moderators and a small number of reviewers go through old submissions" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308) so maybe reviewers, whoever that is, upvoting carries more weight.

kevinbowman · Answer

The FAQ (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html) is the most authoritative source of info, but if you look at @dang’s post history there’s some interesting discussion of other algorithms in use (a recent one was about giving some submissions a “second chance” at making it onto the front page).
From the FAQ: “””
How are stories ranked?
The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted. Comments in threads are ranked the same way.
Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action. “””

r721 · Answer

>I've seen some stories go unnoticed with 9 votes in the "new" section.Some domains are downweighted, and also small amount of user flags will negatively affect story's ranking even before it becomes [flagged].