The stellar.org post set off HN's voting ring detector.

Edit: I (perhaps mistakenly) assumed the parent meant that HN itself was boosting certain URLs, as opposed to, say, name-recognition by users. The latter kind of thing is no doubt a factor.

Parent may have just meant an organic boost--I certainly notice submissions from certain domains above others, and from the looks of things it appears that others do, too. Not necessarily a bad thing at all, but it does seem to be an observable effect.

> The stellar.org post set off HN's voting ring detector.

My understanding of the detector is that (among other things, presumably) it applies a penalty when visitors follow a link directly to the submission from a page other than "new", "news", etc. Is it possible that there is a bug (at least, I think it would be a bug) by which it also penalizes submissions where the visitor has followed a link from elsewhere on HN (eg. parent's link)? I followed the link and upvoted the story, and I assume several others used that path as well.

Good point. I may have gotten over-sensitive! Will edit accordingly.

(and thank antiprocrast for my throwaway..)

You can always email us for a noprocrast indulgence. :)

The ring detector doesn't kill posts, it just demotes them.