We've been running a series of experiments to try to mitigate the randomness of what achieves liftoff from /newest. We started working on this because many users complained that good stories were getting ignored, and we looked closely and found that this was true. Below are links to a few comments I've posted about this over the last year, if anyone's interested. The next experiment will probably be to add a profile setting that people can turn on to let the
software repost their story at a good time, rather than having to get an email invitation—although to judge from the feedback we've been getting, people seem to like the emails.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9828818
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8790134
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9866140