

Ask HN: What makes a thread go on the HN front page - tyng

Is it based on algorithm or manned by an editor?<p>I want to know because I use HN as my daily tech news feed, so I'm curious about the principles of what gets recommended.
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preek
It's certainly an algorithm. If enough people vote for an article, it will go
to the front page. It helps if those people have a lot of karma points.

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tyng
But I've seen articles with 0 comment and only 9 upvotes appear on the front
page, while there are threads with more comments and upvotes not getting
noticed.

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michael_dorfman
The algorithm, crudely speaking, is based on upvotes and age. Nine upvotes in
a short enough period of time will get a story to the #1 position; nine
upvotes over many hours might not get a story on the front page at all
(depending on the other stories.)

If you want to see the details, check out the Arc source code.

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jasonlbaptiste
It's certainly not the getting on the front page that matters the most, it's
staying there.

