So the whole voting system is artificially skewed by HN admins?

HN has always had some editorial oversight from admins. That being said I'm not sure why you were initially surprised at this being on the front page with 4 upvotes in 11 minutes. That's a lot by hn standards. Check new, this and 1 other post are the only ones above 4.

You must be new here

I'm not new here and I'm somewhat taken aback

Isn't 4 upvotes in 11 minutes a lot for Hackernews? I don't think there's anything untoward going on here but I may be naive.

Oh. Ranking here has always been mysterious and corrupt.

Do You think all those ycombinator company posts get to the front page on their own merit? Ha!

There's several hundred Y Combinator companies, but I don't think I've seen a commensurate number of posts to HN. You'd know if it was open slather on Y Combinator companies posting self-promotion material to HN because this post would not be at the top, it would be some launch page for a company ending in 'ly'.

I typically only notice YC companies mentioned here when it is a Techcrunch (or similar) article about them.

It's as if a community of programmers and engineers can't understand the various weights a ranking algorithm can take into account outside of plain "2 > 1".

Stunning.