Ask HN: How Hacker News post are ranked? - ghostpirate
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gamechangr
This is asked very regularly. HN has an official policy which you can google.

Here is one interesting (maybe too long) answer:

[http://sangaline.com/post/reverse-engineering-the-hacker-
new...](http://sangaline.com/post/reverse-engineering-the-hacker-news-ranking-
algorithm/)

~~~
ghostpirate
Thanks a lot

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gus_massa
Essentially, they are ordered by

points / age^2 * a-lot-of-penalties

A more detailed (old) discussion is in: [http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-
hacker-news-ranking-really...](http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-
ranking-really-works.html) HN discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799854](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799854)
(920 points, 1240 days ago, 190 comments)

The algorithm is tweaked from time to time without warning, so many details
may have changed since this was posted ~3 years ago. But the main idea is
still there.

