Comment by praash
6 months ago
My observation is that HN intentionally downranks highly commented threads. I used to think of it as unfair, but now it truly makes sense, considering:
- Posts with high comment-to-vote ratio often have political, scandalous or other kinds of heated themes
- Highly popular/engaging posts already act as self-amplifying snowballs
- High-volume discussion triggered by emotions is hard to navigate, is repetitive, and attracts the dumbest trolls even in HN
- The truly important topics tend to become visible anyway
This was informative. Thanks for the analysis.