I've always felt Priceonomics is gaming HN. How does this post have 28 upvotes and no comments (other than mine)?
And what does tug of war fatalities have to do with Hacker News? Why not a story about people dying from vending machines falling over on them? (7 on average per year)
It could be confirmation bias, but I've noticed lots of posts (from a variety of sources) which accumulate several tens of votes before the first comment. I've attributed it to a subtle shift in HN users where more people vote things up and refrain from commenting until it looks like the post will hang around on the front page for a while. But, that's just speculation.
And what does tug of war fatalities have to do with Hacker News? Why not a story about people dying from vending machines falling over on them? (7 on average per year)