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This is an interesting oddity such as you might expect to see on reddit's /r/mildlyinteresting or til, but I don't feel that this fits well on HN personally. I'

by euank 12y ago

This is an interesting oddity such as you might expect to see on reddit's /r/mildlyinteresting or til, but I don't feel that this fits well on HN personally. I'm not saying HN is turning into reddit by having this content, just pointing out how I'd classify this content. This is absolutely not "intellectually gratifying" in my mind. The fact that it can be trivially consumed (as opposed to a long blog post) might in part lead to it having a higher number of upvotes due to being more accessible, but that doesn't mean that it's better than a less accessible item that gets more upvotes relative to people consuming it, but fewer as an absolute. Edit: It was 1st for about two minutes and then dropped down to 198 instantly (among items from 1-3 days ago and/or with over 20 times fewer points). I'll hazard a guess that the mods agree with me on this and nuked it down.

gedrap 12y ago
I've said that dozens of times and got quite tired of repeating, so briefly speaking, it's because it takes only ~5 votes within first 30-60min to make the front page. The best thing you can do about it is to go to /newest and help to bring good content to the homepage :) Personally, I don't see anything wrong with it as long as it's once in a few days. Was it a regular trend, then it would be worth flagging.
- euank 12y ago
  This is an anomaly that your explanation doesn't apply to though. Notice that it has 50 points and is half an hour old. I count 12 items on the front page currently that have 50 or fewer points and are 1 or more hours old and yet remain there. These items are generally quality content (such as the tinfoil security post -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8086834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8086834 -- which sits at 37 points / 3 hours). Your explanation of "5 votes within the first 30 minutes" completely disregards that this has as many votes as many other items on the front page, but in a fraction of the time period.

by euank 12y ago

gedrap 12y ago

I've said that dozens of times and got quite tired of repeating, so briefly speaking, it's because it takes only ~5 votes within first 30-60min to make the front page. The best thing you can do about it is to go to /newest and help to bring good content to the homepage :) Personally, I don't see anything wrong with it as long as it's once in a few days. Was it a regular trend, then it would be worth flagging.

euank 12y ago
This is an anomaly that your explanation doesn't apply to though. Notice that it has 50 points and is half an hour old. I count 12 items on the front page currently that have 50 or fewer points and are 1 or more hours old and yet remain there. These items are generally quality content (such as the tinfoil security post -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8086834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8086834 -- which sits at 37 points / 3 hours). Your explanation of "5 votes within the first 30 minutes" completely disregards that this has as many votes as many other items on the front page, but in a fraction of the time period.