It’s not just the number of points that matter, it’s points over time. 3 points very quickly will rocket you over 20 points in 4 hours or something. And comments factor in too, so commenting “why is this on the front page” just helps it be on the front page

Not to mention this was at 23 points just 3 minutes after the GP post.

It's a technology and business story of general interest. Right in line with HN.

>> Right in line with HN.

It is unquestionably that.

It was heavily flagged by users, so I'd question that. Sensational partisan stories are nearly always off topic.

An extremely partisan voting block heavily flagging something is a piss-poor signal for on-topicness, come on. That kind of sloppy logic is a great way to let organized voting rings suppress uncomfortable news, though.

Incredibly embarrassing statement for someone moderating this place to be making.

Sorry, I'm not following you here. The sensational-indignant OP, just like anything equivalent of whatever political flavor, is obviously not in line with HN. That should be obvious both in theory (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and in practice (https://news.ycombinator.com/front). So it was correct for users to flag the submission. Indeed, if people hadn't been flagging such things for well over a decade, HN wouldn't still exist.

I mean, if you want to argue that the story is actually a substantive and intellectually interesting one, containing significant new information (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...), and it's just the title that's sensational-indignant, that would be fine. But that bar is necessarily pretty high when it comes to garden-variety political pieces. If it weren't, then HN would just be a political site.

Edit: btw, adding comments definitely does not help a post stay on the front page - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34041016.

Sorry but I really think you're off base. It's true that politically minded users (or partisans of any strong cause) tend to flag stories from the side they don't like. But it's also true that many HN users flag stories that they think don't belong on HN, given the site guidelines.

Were there any acceptable stories about the Trump trading card NFTs? Maybe OP was too biased, but it seemed like an interesting topic in general.

Trump and NFTs are both such well-trodden flamebait that it's hard to imagine one , but maybe it's possible to get a -1 x -1 = +1 effect. It's not intrinsically offtopic, just probably so.

Fair enough. Thank you.

I believe a high point to comment ratio ranks a post higher, that a low ratio is considered a sign of contentiousness or low quality post.

That bit about comments is not true, and is rather important, because adding noise comments damages the signal/noise ratio of discussion.

The front page is highly manipulated.

By whom?

Dang and co. You can read his comment history for explanations if you're curious, using https://hn.algolia.com/ to search.

It's not nefarious as is implied here, but it's not totally "organic".

The HN Algorithm, Dang, PG, and the HN users.

If you include software, mods, and community, that's the totality of the system, in which case I don't think you can call it manipulation; can the system manipulate itself? But it's not clear to me what the GP meant by that word.

I'm not sure what you mean by "manipulated"? unless you mean the general category of "curated", "moderated", "censored", etc., all of which seem to have the same factual component and vary mostly by the feeling they express.

I don't mind which word you use but I do want the community to understand what we do and that we're open about it, at least in the sense that when people ask questions, we answer them.

Let me ask you a question, why are so concerned about it being on the front page?