HN is largely a collaborative filtering platform with moderators. In collaborative filtering, the users ARE the algorithm. So, what's going on with you?
If that’s true then why aren’t the more upvoted posts getting ranked higher than the less upvoted posts. You didn’t address OPs comment at all.
Its not only upvotes that affect ranking, but also flagging.
Because time is involved. The scoring formula is something like `(votes/age)^g` where `g` is a "gravitational constant". So if there is a post with 200 votes overall but is 20 hours old will be ranked lower than a post with 30 votes but was created 1 hour ago
Are you sure that formula is right? f(x)=x^g is a strictly monotonic function for all positive g, so the ordering of the scores will stay the same no matter what constant is used for g (assuming g is positive).
It's a bit more involved than that. There are factors like nonURL posts etc. It's been some time since ycombinator.com/arc held the source code of HN (it no longer holds the source code) so I can not verify the actual formula.