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ejr · 2014-07-29 03:44:22+00:00

I've been lurking here for quite a while before I started posting and I strongly suspect it's the ratio of upvotes to comments that trigger this. There may be a "recalculation" at 40 comments for performance or other reasons, but I've seen plenty of other stories with hundreds of comments and an equal or greater number of upvotes - on occasion passing 1000 - that stay on the front page for the better part of a day.

zppx | karma 381 | avg karma 1.83 · | 2011-01-19 02:54:03+00:00

Let's wait for the official answer, but I also include my take.

Maybe because of the community growth. When I began to hang out around here, 6 months before I created an account I believe, 40 upvotes was a huge amount for a post or a comment.

Today it's common to see posts with more than 100 in the front page and comments receiving 60 or so.

EDIT: The number of comments in each posts also exploded, 20 comments in a thread used to make it very active.

EDIT 2: For clarification.

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pb7 | karma 3224 | avg karma 1.98 · | 2023-10-03 11:32:30

This is standard automated behavior when comment count exceeds story upvote count.

eridius | karma 15723 | avg karma 2.78 · | 2017-06-23 20:45:30+00:00

I'm pretty sure this is it. I heard once that if a story has more comments then votes it starts falling, though I don't know if that's accurate.

jamesrcole | karma 2386 | avg karma 1.72 · | 2017-04-12 11:44:07+00:00

Hardly a strange coincidence. How strange is it for posts to get at least 42 comments at some stage in their existence, and for this to be one of them?

stock_toaster | karma 6271 | avg karma 3.37 · | 2020-01-31 20:43:55+00:00

Could be automod stuff. I have read a few hypothesis a couple of times about things that can trigger automodding, like many upvotes but few comments, or lots of deeply nested comments very quickly.

christofd | karma 289 | avg karma 1.55 · | 2009-04-23 05:23:13+00:00

I'm seeing a pattern here (I gotta start timing this):

Many comments start out with an even number of slowly incoming VOTES, and once one or few of those comments hit a critical mass in up-votes they gain rank much quicker: there is noticeable ACCELERATION in the uptake. I suspect we could have a herd effect going on, where people are not really reading the comments, but confidently up-voting what other people have up-voted.

Also, many stories sit around for a while (at the top), before anybody comments. Then traffic in COMMENTS trickles in slowly, and after a critical mass of comments, again, the uptake ACCELERATES. Here I suspect people are waiting for other people to claim the space.

Any thoughts?

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ericol | karma 1022 | avg karma 3.37 · | 2023-01-21 15:57:54

In my experience (And observations), depending on _interest_ posts start gathering comments after at least the hour mark. This post right now is 25 mins old, although its' weird that it's so high in the front page (Probably a slow Saturday)

jaywalk | karma 7082 | avg karma 2.71 · | 2021-09-27 14:40:09

It has been this way for years, so it's definitely no accident. Posts that elicit more comments absolutely end up getting ranked higher by The Algorithm™.

andrewflnr | karma 11547 | avg karma 2.11 · | 2013-08-25 16:30:23

Regarding the comment count drivebyacct2 mentioned, I consider it a good sign when a story has a high upvote/comment ratio. 32/6 (soon to be 7) is pretty good.

manmal | karma 5545 | avg karma 2.07 · | 2020-06-08 18:19:58

I‘m also quite certain that, with more karma, comments stay at the top longer. Cannot say much about submissions.

zeratul | karma 3109 | avg karma 8.43 · | 2011-12-10 15:53:21

Some old stories show number of comments while some don't. Could that be related?

My data shows that the stories on the front page had unusual high scores last night.

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saagarjha | karma 56017 | avg karma 2.29 · | 2021-10-28 06:25:00

It's upvotes with some sort of recency bias so that newly posted comments get a few minutes near the top of the thread to be seen.

robotnoises | karma 409 | avg karma 3.1 · | 2015-06-25 14:21:11+00:00

This is off-topic, but how is it that this is the top story on HN right now with zero discussion (assuming that by the time I click "add comment" I am the first to comment).

Is it dumb to assume that it's normal for upvotes and comments to increase at a similar rate?

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timje1 | karma 945 | avg karma 3.36 · | 2014-07-25 09:51:43

It's got a lot of upvotes and not too many comments in a small period of time.

digitalengineer | karma 3210 | avg karma 2.79 · | 2014-04-09 10:21:13+00:00

I think the treshold is about 40 comments before it gets pushed down on the frontpage.

cryptonector | karma 9732 | avg karma 1.52 · | 2020-06-05 21:17:38

More-upvoted comments float up. That's how Reddit works.

detaro | karma 40664 | avg karma 1.79 · | 2020-08-29 16:09:54

Comments/upvotes ratio feeds into the ranking algorithm - it might have hit a threshold there.

theandrewbailey | karma 10214 | avg karma 2.28 · | 2023-11-20 11:34:22

Stories with lots of comments get a ranking penalty. It's done with intentions of stopping flame wars. (I don't know if it's effective.) It happens around 40 comments or so.

oarsinsync | karma 4364 | avg karma 2.39 · | 2020-07-12 13:51:29

Comments outnumbering votes is one of the heuristics used to determine if a thread is likely to be toxic rather than promoting good discourse, so that may be what dampened this off the front page.