Re:Show HN: No more “idea websites” – here's a problem solvi...
by minimaxir on Saturday October 25, 2014 @10:20PM
(#8510080)
> However doesn't it make sense that an issue that's popular would reflect the magnitude of it's importance?
Not exactly. You're confusing correlation with causation.
On sites with Reddit-like rankings, the number of votes which a submission receives is one of the primary causes for the subsequent number of comments/activity of those respective submissions. And "importance" is not necessarily causal to submission ranking (aggregators are weird).
Issues are a bit simpler in that they mostly are based on activity related to them. However doesn't it make sense that an issue that's popular would reflect the magnitude of it's importance?