When I make a comment, my username is displayed. If upvotes and their timestamps were public, it would make it a lot easier for the community to get to the bottom of any funny business like OP is describing.
EDIT: Slightly altering it a bit. What if only the first 50 upvotes were public?
Hell they could just tag articles related to YC companies with a special color and pin them for a bit. I'd be fine with that.
There are three formal things that HN gives back to YC in exchange for funding it: (1) job ads, which appear on the front page and later on https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs; (2) Launch HNs for YC startups, which appear on the front page and later on https://news.ycombinator.com/launches; (3) YC alumni usernames display in orange to other YC alumni (though not to themselves, which has led to a stream of emails over the years).
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
We explicitly don't do anything beyond that to favor YC or YC companies on HN, though we don't draw lines to exclude anything either, because YC-related people and content are an inseparable part of the community here.
I really need to add this to the FAQ though.
e.g. if you're someone who routinely upvotes posts within minutes, maybe your vote could count for less than an account that only dips in to the new page occasionally?
Or maybe your vote gets penalised if it's your only upvote in a 24 hour period?
Or maybe HN keeps track of who you upvote with, and your vote gets penalised the more you upvote with the same people?
idk, it sounds like a fun project for someone if HN wanted a more organic front page.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
I've personally spent hundreds of hours working on this, as well as tracking down voting rings of every imaginable sort. I'd never claim that our software catches everything, but I can tell you that it catches so much that I often go through the lists to find examples of good projects that people were trying ineptly to promote, and invite them to do it again in a way that is more likely to gain community interest.
I can see you didn't want to talk about this, esp with the tedious conspiracists. But I'm glad you did, and appreciate your work in keeping HN interesting & fair.
It surprised me because 1) I achieved a moderate position on the front page a few years back "asking a few friends" to upvote something about my former company, but mainly 2) there's no warning to new post submitters as to the values, integrity etc. of the site, to warn people off trying to game it, which I'd expect when you'd put that much work in.
I know there's a minimalist / in-the-know aesthetic to HN but I've been here 10 years, started & sold a tech business, and still didn't know the rules, the moderation patterns etc, other than "by example" (but then who'd want a whole meta.hn forum, gulp).
Out of curiosity, would you be willing to share a link to the post you mentioned that got on the front page? I'd like to see whether our software missed it, and why. You can provide it here or send it to hn@ycombinator.com if you'd prefer a private conversation.
Sometimes the software catches voting rings and we turn the penalty off because the article seems likely to interest the community. It's not perfect, though, and knowing about cases that it missed can be very helpful, since independent verification is usually not available!