SpaceX CRS-3 Mission

>>ColinW+(OP)
Is this submission being flagged by users, or has it tripped some sort of scoring penalty?

Dropping suddenly from 3rd to 20th on the front page suggests some sort of penalty being applied, but is it community driven, or automated? Even with the new openness about the actions of the moderators on HN I still find some things deeply confusing.

Added in edit: This does bring home just how important upvotes are. I've seen how disproportional the effect is of downvotes on an item's ranking - one downvotes out-weights many upvotes. If you like something, upvote it, or see it sink without trace.

>>ColinW+U7
I put a moderate moderator flag on it so that it would be lower, but still on the front page. My reasoning: Space X is cool and interesting, but it isn't a major story every time they do a launch.

Edit: We took the penalty off several hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7611240

>>dang+Al
Launches aren't all that often, and this launch has the entirely new feature of looking to recover the first stage. This is a technical project of interest specifically to hackers, I'd've thought, hence the number of up-votes. I know that up-votes alone aren't enough to show that something is relevant or of value, but I thought this was.

Certainly I thought the discussion was interesting.

FWIW, it's not me who has down-voted you. Not least, of course, I can't since your comment is a reply to mine. Personally I think your comment should not be down-voted - it's certainly of value.

>>ColinW+Bn
Ok, I'll change it.

We have no way of knowing which of these posts are particularly significant. Many people seem to upvote anything with SpaceX in the title, and I'm skeptical that it should be on the front page so often. Since you say this one is unusual, I believe you.

But really, please send questions like this to hn@ycombinator.com rather than posting them in the threads.

p.s. Downvoting that comment is fine; it's an efficient way for users to communicate that I made a mistake there. That's better than posting a low signal-noise reply.

>>dang+np
Personally, I'd be fine with SpaceX being on the front page every day.

Google/Facebook/Twitter are on the front page all the time, every time they make some little burp. I like those companies and what they do, but SpaceX is 1000x more interesting to me than any of those.

zlacker