Moderators and a small number of reviewer users comb the depths of /newest looking for stories that got overlooked but which the community might find interesting. Those go into a second-chance pool from which stories are randomly selected and lobbed onto the bottom part of the front page. This guarantees them a few minutes of attention. If they don't interest the community they soon fall off, but if they do, they get upvoted and stay on the front page.
We want to turn this system into something that's open to all users who want to take time to review stories. We'll make it a form of community service that will be a new way to earn karma. However, it's still an open question how to pull this off without simply recreating the current upvoting system under another guise.
There's one glitch that occasionally confuses people. When the software lobs a story, it displays a rolled-back timestamp—not the original submission time, but a resubmission time relative to other items on the front page. If you see a timestamp inconsistency on HN, this is probably why. Edit: if this is the kind of detail that interests you, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19774614 for a more recent explanation.
Moderators and a small number of reviewer users comb the depths of /newest looking for stories that got overlooked but which the community might find interesting. Those go into a second-chance pool from which stories are randomly selected and lobbed onto the bottom part of the front page. This guarantees them a few minutes of attention. If they don't interest the community they soon fall off, but if they do, they get upvoted and stay on the front page.
We want to turn this system into something that's open to all users who want to take time to review stories. We'll make it a form of community service that will be a new way to earn karma. However, it's still an open question how to pull this off without simply recreating the current upvoting system under another guise.
There's one glitch that occasionally confuses people. When the software lobs a story, it displays a rolled-back timestamp—not the original submission time, but a resubmission time relative to other items on the front page. If you see a timestamp inconsistency on HN, this is probably why. Edit: if this is the kind of detail that interests you, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19774614 for a more recent explanation.