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600+ upvotes, top #1, vanishes from one second to another - whats up HN?

I answered the question and buried the story for what should be an obvious reason: meta support questions are not on-topic for HN, let alone belong on the front page, let alone at #1. The guidelines explicitly ask you not to post them. I'll add this info to my comment there as well.

Why did this thread disappear from the front page? It has 45 upvotes and was on the front page initially with just 5 or so upvotes.

The only thing affecting these stories is that many users are flagging them.

Edit: perhaps more detail would help. The story was initially flagged by enough users that it was killed. We unkilled it for reasons I described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711660. That caused the process which is affecting all these stories to pick up where it left off: lots of upvotes and lots of flags, with the flags winning over the upvotes. As a result, the story fell in rank again—but didn't get killed, because once we unkill something flags no longer have the power to kill it.

thanks for the explanation

Reply on news.ycombinator.com