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
If anything, the statistics actually suggest these articles were weighted the other way around. tmux-rs stayed on the frontpage much longer than it logically should have, especially compared to this thread.
...in any case, what's the "joke" about this? GPL violation is very serious, Tesla was forced to publish a substantial amount of proprietary code after a similar infraction.
That was my point / what the joke is: it appears to be down ranked (or it’s a comment thing as your sibling points out), it’s serious, and it’s a YC company.
Doesn’t seem to match the natural algorithm.