Reddit CEO admits to altering user comments that were critical of him

This post is decaying off of the front page of HN very quickly (every few refreshes it drops a position or more), despite have more upvotes and being posted more recently. Reddit is a YC company as well. Is this post being artificially pushed down?

It's well known that HN has anti-flamewar algorithms. Too many comments vs votes (or user flagging too, presumably) causes its rank to drop.

I've been here fairly regularly for 8 years and didn't know about it, so I'm not sure I agree that it's "well known". It definitely isn't in the FAQ's section about how stories are ranked: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html -- which, in my opinion, would be an excellent place to describe it.

I'm glad dang answered though since I've been wondering for quite a while why some stories seemed to sink much faster than others.

Putting it in the FAQ is a good idea, and if anyone who doesn't see it there in a week or two would email hn@ycombinator.com to bug me about it, I'd be thankful. Except wait, are you saying anyone reads the FAQ?

An idea that came up recently which we're mulling over is showing 'vouch' links (or something analogous) on stories that are being penalized this way, so users can indicate that they think a discussion is really substantive.

Sure, I'll check in a week or so and remind you if needed.

> Except wait, are you saying anyone reads the FAQ?

Fair point :)

The 'vouch' idea is interesting, but I'm not sure if you really need another click mechanism to accomplish it -- if people above a certain karma threshold are voting it up, it's a topic that people integrated into the community do think is worth being seen, regardless of the quality of the discussion currently in the thread. That said, it might be worth trying -- having a visible indicator might result in a different reaction; it's possible that the majority of such stories would get vouched, which could be a useful signal in tuning your algorithm.