IIRC, the mods will periodically boost interesting links that didn’t get very far when originally submitted back up. I’d guess that’s it?
Ah okay so the popularity list of interesting links in HN is not only user driven, as I initially thought (except for rule violations), but also mod driven.
I’ve seen dang explain it before, although I don’t remember exact details. I think they’ll just give interesting links a bump every now and then if they didn’t get a fair shot for whatever reason.
> We started doing this because it turned out that if you lob a story onto the front page with an old (say "2 days ago") timestamp, the thread will turn into "how is this story on the front page when it was posted 2 days ago".
I'm not sure if it's the right approach to edit timestamps, sounds like a hack to me.