Ask HN: What makes a thread go on the HN front page

1 pointtyng4 comments

Is it based on algorithm or manned by an editor?

I want to know because I use HN as my daily tech news feed, so I'm curious about the principles of what gets recommended.

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It's certainly an algorithm. If enough people vote for an article, it will go to the front page. It helps if those people have a lot of karma points.

But I've seen articles with 0 comment and only 9 upvotes appear on the front page, while there are threads with more comments and upvotes not getting noticed.

The algorithm, crudely speaking, is based on upvotes and age. Nine upvotes in a short enough period of time will get a story to the #1 position; nine upvotes over many hours might not get a story on the front page at all (depending on the other stories.)

If you want to see the details, check out the Arc source code.

It's certainly not the getting on the front page that matters the most, it's staying there.

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