It would be interesting to see stats for HN regarding that. It seems like afternoons are quite dead around here.
Then again, I'd rather that data not be public, because it only leads to people trying to game the system for more karma, and I prefer this site the way it is.
I think curiosity should be satisfied over practical security-by-obscurity of not knowing... I think it would be interesting to make a graph of news.YC score based on the time during the week that it was posted... Maybe a circular kernel distribution of sorts?
PG! Could you release your server logs? Pretty please?
since the rank of a post is votes / hours since submission if you wanted to game the system you would probably wait until the morning to post something. More eyeballs means more potential votes, which leads to being higher on the home page, which leads to more attention, etc. That's just my guess though.
Things seem to stay on the front page for more than 24 hours on Hacker News, so I doubt there's any reason to try to game the system. If your article is good, people will see it.
Once they get to the front page. There is a relatively (depending on the time of day, and no I don't have stats) smaller window when stuff scrolls down the 'new' page.
Then again, I'd rather that data not be public, because it only leads to people trying to game the system for more karma, and I prefer this site the way it is.