I dunno. This is standard practice for things like SEO algos to try to slow down spammers, or risk algos to slow down scammers.
HN drives a boatload of traffic, so getting on the front page has economic value. That means there are 100% people out there who will abuse a published ranking system to spam us.
HN drives a boatload of traffic, so getting on the front page has economic value. That means there are 100% people out there who will abuse a published ranking system to spam us.