Check out “how are stories ranked” in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

Overheated discussions get demoted. I think the idea is that the comments should support discussion of the content, but not usurp it.

> How are stories ranked?

> The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted. Comments in threads are ranked the same way.

> Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action.

It could also be moderator action.

My most viral submission suddenly dropped from the top story to page 8, despite having far more points than anything else on that page, and only being a few hours old. I suspect this happened because it was a negative post about Amazon. The comments were not overheated. Most posters agreed with my sentiment.

Multiple submissions seen by many and lots of discussion. Stuff moves fast.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41821336

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41821400

And that's just on this development. Each stage of this crazy story has had plenty of views and discussion here.

I believe the comment-to-upvote ratio is triggering an automated down-weighing on most of them.

When the comment to upvote ratio is too high, posts are down weighted to prevent flamewars, apparently.

Do note that there is barely any comments on any. So, maybe that is a factor.

There's no such thing as downvoting a post on HN, only a comment.

There's flagging a post, but that would show up next to the post - do you have any examples?

Moderators can downweight posts to drop their rankings. Here are 3 examples:

https://news.social-protocols.org/stats?id=41791369

https://news.social-protocols.org/stats?id=41815614

https://news.social-protocols.org/stats?id=41821336

Note the orange line indicating rank, which in every case shows a very sudden and precipitous drop in the rank of each post.

Those threads appear to be stoking the drama more than anything. HN's stated goal is to satisfy intellectual curiosity, and even if the post topic itself is of interest, if the discussion isn't substantive then the system is probably working as intended (regardless of whether it's the flamewar detector or a manual downweight).

I guess these only go back so far? I was hoping to see the graph on my post, which dropped like a stone after a few hours. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40992654)

Moderators can reduce the position of a post on the front page.