“The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted. Comments in threads are ranked the same way.”

Currently 32 points, in the ten minutes since it was posted.

*edit: now 43 points in 11 minutes

It's kind of like the concept of a child prodigy: not every single one grows into something significant but performing well early gets you into spotlights.

It gets to number 1 I suppose as it got those votes very quickly. It's likely to be a hot topic if you give it a bit of time.

It's a bit of a prisoner's dilemma, it would be a nice platform if everyone didn't do that, but like many other things it tends to result in a defect-defect scenario.