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Ask HN: Why did three HN stories jump 100 ranking points in 5 mins?
14 points by walterbell on Sept 13, 2014 | hide | past | favorite | 6 comments
http://hnrankings.info/8311860,8312295,8312249,8312411/

  #162 -> #25   Server Migration with Zero Downtime
  #135 -> #11   Show HN: Pup – A command line HTML parser
  #127 -> #23   The Impossible Star



We've been experimenting for the last few months with systems to prevent good stories from falling through the cracks. Your left column is the cracks.

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=author%3Adang+cracks#!/comment/for...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8157880

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8134682

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8122403


Thanks. Is there any way to query a list of stories which qualified for manual elevation?

Edit: does the escalation algorithm perform batch escalations at fixed times every day, working from a queue of manually approved escalations? Or is the timing and quantity of escalations in each batch also manually approved?


I don't think it makes sense to go into detail because this stuff is rapidly changing as we figure it out.

The principle is that we want to do as little manually as possible.


Understood. YC has a unique opportunity here to play a leadership role in algorithmic awareness, http://social.cs.uiuc.edu/papers/pdfs/paper188.pdf & https://civic.mit.edu/blog/natematias/uncovering-algorithms-...


How do you define "good"? What checks and balances are there to prevent abuse?

This all sounds rather worrying.


That's a bit vague so I may not address your concern exactly, but it sounds like you're worried about the front page not being a simple ranking by community upvotes. HN has never been a simple ranking by community upvotes; it has always been a blend of upvotes and curation. Why? Because, unfortunately, upvotes alone would produce a front page of controversy, gossip, and fashion. Upvotes go disproportionately for 'hot' stories. Since we want quieter, more reflective material on, there needs to be a countervailing factor.

Re abuse, you'd have to be more specific about what you mean, but I suppose the general answer is you needn't be more worried about it now than you've been for the previous seven years, since there hasn't been any major change at that level. The major change has been greater transparency, because users asked for it.




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