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Comment by crispyporkbites | Hacker News Reader

What help is available to get show hn posts to the front page?

Second-chance queue.

I've had several submissions re-upped. I nominate others (via email) on occaision. '2nd chance nom', plus submission link.

Do NOT ask me to do this --- I base my recommendations on what strikes me as 1) credible content 2) that seems underappreciated. The submission queue ("new" link in top menue) is quite busy.

Following their post history, it looks like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380.

Thanks for linking that. TIL: sorting rank is a function of timestamp and votes, so when the mods push a story back to the front page, instead of special-casing the behavior, they just (get a computer to) fabricate a submission timestamp that puts the story in appropriate place on the front page.

It's a clever hack, alright, but dang if I didn't start to think I was going crazy, because something felt off with timestamps and surely the mods wouldn't be silently messing with those...

It's not a great solution because it confuses the people who notice. The problem is that it's even more confusing if we re-up posts that say "3 days ago" or whatever onto the front page. Then the threads fill up with "why is this 3 days ago post on the front page"?

Another option would be to clone the old submission into a new one, but then we get more dupes. And I don't know of any viable fourth option.

Maybe display the old timestamp, but also display a visible "re-up" tag next to it? This way it'll be obvious the submission was reinserted manually to give it a second chance.

Well that's certainly a fourth option! I'll think about it.

Fourth option - don't show dates or timestamps at all. The age of the actual article is what matters, and people can find that out by actually reading the article.

Would that not be viable?

I think there's a lot of information in those timestamps. They convey the rhythms of the site. Of course that's also why fudging them causes confusion...

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