This post fell in rank because it triggered the flamewar detector. I've just restored it. If you see things suddenly reappear on the front page, it's often because a moderator saw a case like this.
Curious, how does the flamewar detector work? Is it looking at velocity of commenting? Specific language perhaps?
We're committed to increasing transparency, but the HN algorithms will probably remain an exception to that; certainly for the time being.
From some previous post (don't ask me to find it), it takes into consideration the number of comments vs votes. Many more comments than votes imply a flamewar.
Ah, thank you for restoring it!
You're welcome. Unfortunately, our algorithm sometimes mis-asseses an enthusiastic discussion as an angry one. The solution is for a human to review the list. I wrote software just for that, but we can't watch it at all times. And the flamewar detector has proven so valuable to HN that turning it off would do more harm than good, so we won't.