Perhaps not really a feature, but: yesterday I submitted
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1173147 It sank pretty quickly due to a lack of upvotes. However, despite its low position, it did accumulate 9 upvotes over the last day, which I guess are due to seperate submissions of the same story. From this, I propose the algorithm that decides what appears on the frontpage can use tweaking to weigh submissions heavier than upvotes (perhaps it does?). If this story was truly submitted 10 times, perhaps it deserves a higher position?