Sometimes I'm really surprised by what goes into the top of HN. I'm wondering if manual ranking is not the most common thing nowadays.
This reached the 15th position 32 mins after publication with just 3 points and zero comment.
The content is also ok but not particularly exceptional: yet another 8B model, just this time from good old IBM, with an entreprise license but nothing out of the ordinary except that.
3 points are ~the threshold to put you on the front page for a very short time to maybe get more votes. Comments are not a positive influence as far as I know. (But a high comment-to-upvote ratio can apply a penalty)
You just got lucky to see a new post at the right time.
I was thinking about something like that at first, but still doesn't make sense compared to other "new" entries.
For example, the following one was posted 1h ago, have almost 50 points and comments, and is just at the 15th place now when the IBM one is around 9th with 6 points. When I did my first comment it already had a lot of points but was on second page of results.
Just around the same time as IBM post, there was 2 other posts with also 3 points that aren't anywhere near any of the "top" pages:
Sometimes I'm really surprised by what goes into the top of HN. I'm wondering if manual ranking is not the most common thing nowadays.
This reached the 15th position 32 mins after publication with just 3 points and zero comment.
The content is also ok but not particularly exceptional: yet another 8B model, just this time from good old IBM, with an entreprise license but nothing out of the ordinary except that.
What makes me notice is that I have noticed recently that there is a lot of posts that reach the top without even a single comment.
And I often expect the comments to provide interesting context for articles. Especially some like that there are raw company PR without context.
3 points are ~the threshold to put you on the front page for a very short time to maybe get more votes. Comments are not a positive influence as far as I know. (But a high comment-to-upvote ratio can apply a penalty)
You just got lucky to see a new post at the right time.
I was thinking about something like that at first, but still doesn't make sense compared to other "new" entries.
For example, the following one was posted 1h ago, have almost 50 points and comments, and is just at the 15th place now when the IBM one is around 9th with 6 points. When I did my first comment it already had a lot of points but was on second page of results.
Just around the same time as IBM post, there was 2 other posts with also 3 points that aren't anywhere near any of the "top" pages:
One 5 mins before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41901058
One 15 min later: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41901168
And 20 mins later: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41901210
Obviously points are increasing a lot now that the post is in the topest of the top.
The top post just now exactly confirmed my feeling: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41901298
Number one of the ranking with 4 points and zero comment.
Again, a blog post that is ok but very very far from exceptional. A shell tip blog post like thousand others before.
EDIT: 5 mins later it is in position 25th with 8 points of karma.