Or maybe because there is constant stream of Stallman resigning posts. Few every hour. Latest is 23 minutes old when I'm writing this. The fsf.org linked was the main post with lots of good comments and it's now over day old.

Yes but a few was more popular, like the one who OP linked. Stories like that usually exist on the front page (or at least page 2) for more than 1 day.

This is also not the first time I've experienced that controversial topics simply disappear. Maybe you're right but it just seems like it happens too often.

> like the one who OP linked.

It was the fsf link.

Yes? It is not currently even on page 3 or 4 even if it got almost 2000 points. This is probably due to moderated behavior or else it would still be on the frontpage since it's such a big story.

The old HN ranking algorithm is roughly:

    (votes - 1) / ((item_hour_age+2)^1.8)

The current ranking might have some tweaks, but there is exponential decay.

It meas that using the old algorithm, the article with 1667 points and 1 day old (24-48 hours) has score between 4.5 and 1.5. Currently the last item in the front page has 242 points, 11 hours ago, so it would have 2.5 points.

I think you are correct in this case. I found the link on page 4, I just searched badly before but in my defense HN can be pretty hard to read sometimes.

All of these threads rapidly go into dumpster fire territory, so I imagine they get bounced out pretty quickly by the automated flamewar detectors, if not the various classes of flags.

I'm not saying it is not the correct thing to do, just that it seems like it's happening. But just stating this makes people downvote which is very confusing to me.