Comment by cperciva
10 years ago
Did people honestly think the internet was going to play fair for the first time in history? That an online vote was going to be taken seriously?
Of course not. And if you read the original announcement, it was very clear: "to answer one question I know will come up: Upvotes are an important factor but they're too brittle to rely on exclusively; doing so would encourage the wrong kind of trying to game the system."
Maciej tried to game the system, and got the answer he deserved: "Nice try, but we told you that we weren't going to let you do that". Actually, I think he got more than he deserved: If I had been in Kevin's place I wouldn't have bothered with the ad-hoc phone interview.
From that same post:
So we're going to gauge community interest both by upvotes and comments, and in case of doubt I'll make the final call—or better, figure out a way to put the final call to the community.
Pinboard was the most discussed entrant as well as the highest voted. I also don't think it's foolish of me to think that a ranking based on "discussion" or "comments" is just a glorified poll with more subjectivity, and just as vulnerable to manipulation (if not more).
It was also implied a value judgement would only be made in case of doubt, seems like Pinboard was doubtless the front runner. Very unfortunate they didn't manage to put the final call to the community though.
As an aside, i'd just like to echo how odd it is to see people on Hacker News advocate against people gaming the system
Pinboard was the most discussed entrant as well as the highest voted
I'll concede that it could be misunderstood, but I'm sure that by "comments" they meant the content of the discussion, not just the number of comments.