>update: this post has been instantly demoted from #1 to #26 on HN front page :) Hmm.
Conspiracy theories and persecution complexes are always so much more fun than the banal realities.
There is no secret HN cabal trying to hide this post. The HN algorithm is designed to encourage good discussion and, critically, discourage conflict.
Posts that drive lots of upvote/downvote battles or other signals of conflict are always automatically pushed down in ranking, regardless of the topic.
This is not because the mods don't understand that sometime discussion leads to conflict, it's because the mods want HN to remain a place where people debate hard topics well.
Adding debates where commenters and voters behave poorly to the mix is viewed as poisoning the conversation well, and long-term conversation quality on a scale of months or years is more important to the mods than any particular topic, even the one that "you" (any particular "you") happen to feel is critically important.
Conspiracy theories and persecution complexes are always so much more fun than the banal realities.
There is no secret HN cabal trying to hide this post. The HN algorithm is designed to encourage good discussion and, critically, discourage conflict.
Posts that drive lots of upvote/downvote battles or other signals of conflict are always automatically pushed down in ranking, regardless of the topic.
This is not because the mods don't understand that sometime discussion leads to conflict, it's because the mods want HN to remain a place where people debate hard topics well.
Adding debates where commenters and voters behave poorly to the mix is viewed as poisoning the conversation well, and long-term conversation quality on a scale of months or years is more important to the mods than any particular topic, even the one that "you" (any particular "you") happen to feel is critically important.