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Ask HN: Why were a few rank numbers black on the homepage?

110 points by lucb1e ↗ HN
The HN homepage has five ranks colored black rather than gray. Currently this is "Learning how to ride a bike", "Log4j: Between a rock and a hard place", "How to train your decision-making AIs", "Carolina Gold was once the most popular rice grown in America (2019)", and "Packaging for instant coffee made out of seaweed". It seems to follow the story, e.g. the bike story was #12 before and now it's #13: the color moved with it. They do not have in common a recent/old submission time, high/low score, or high/low comments.

The HTML difference is `<font color="black">$rank</font>` being inserted around the rank.

It also shows up in incognito mode with the same ones colored black, so I don't think it's account-related.

(Some rambling follows, I'm not actually serious about a secret hidden meaning, just a toy idea. Most likely it's something like low comment downvotes to attract attention to the story.)

My first thought was that the numbers had a hidden meaning as a puzzle or respect, maybe someone died who invented the equivalent of a Fibonacci sequence. Looking in the OEIS, 1,4,6,12,18 did not mean anything obvious (http://oeis.org/search?q=1%2C4%2C6%2C12%2C18). Then I noticed the numbers changed... but not pseudorandomly, but with the stories, so it seems that the numbers are irrelevant. Is it about the title? If you read the first title character of each, you get LCHPL. If you read the 1st character of the first, the 2nd character of the 2nd, etc., you get LAWKN. Not yet seeing that hidden meaning.

Edit: To everyone saying a hot indicator, I thought of that and it doesn't seem to make sense. E.g. go to page 3 and observe this one being black:

> 4 points by [user] 7 hours ago

There are currently (22:47 UTC) actually 3 black on the third page, which seems a bit inconsistent with what I saw earlier (earlier: first page had 4, next page had 1, next page had 0).

40 comments

[ 94.5 ms ] story [ 1960 ms ] thread
minimaxir
On Christmas, the rank numbers alternate between black/green and red.

But this isn't alternation. Very odd.

lucb1e
Yes, that's one of the things it made me think of as well. Perhaps an accidental push to prod while testing something for this year's Christmas?
exolymph
Intriguingly, this post was one of them when I saw it. Lol. Maybe dang will show up to explain.
ajsfoux234
For me, there were four black-colored stories on the front page, and the fifth black-colored story was #56 on the second page.
teruakohatu
For me it changed each time I visited another discussion page, or maybe just as I refreshed, currently only number 1 is back and it is no longer changing.

Edit: after posting this comment #3 (this story) changed to black.

CyberRabbi
Is HN still written in LISP? I think it’s time it’s written in a modern type-safe language. You know what I mean.
thechao
Like Common Lisp?
lucb1e
I think they were joking about Java because of log4j.
sova
Yeah it's called Arc :D
hyperpallium2
(my guess) those rising faster than some threshold, over some period of time.
lucb1e
Unless I miscounted in my head, that does not seem to hold true. Could be wrong though. Is it purely a guess or did you look at some stories and conclude this?

Edit: see the addition to the TS, I noticed some counter-evidence towards this theory.

hyperpallium2
Looked at stories with it, and without, and how they changed over time.

Anyway, dang has explained - but seems an unlikely explanation of that counter-example...

lucb1e
Yeah I was considering asking in my reply to dang, but figured that this mod code just runs separately from the rest and it's a tracking thing rather than something supposed to be computed for everyone, so it's probably just not integrated with the rank computation code and instead sets a flag/boolean on the story, updated every minute or something. Didn't think the details mattered enough to take more of his time, though if more people are interested then perhaps it's warranted (so feel free to just reply there and ask imo).
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
edoceo
Looks to me to be a "hot" indicator. Like lots of recent upvotes.
samwillis
I think you are mostly right, it looks to me like stories that are rising up the page, rather than dropping or stationary.

Could it be a feature that is usually visible to mods or highly ranked users but has accidentally been opened up?

(Also I have a vague feeling is seeing this before)

Edit: 100% sure this is right. Also this story just dropped from 2nd to 13th instantaneously. Thinking as it’s HN Meta it’s probably (understandably) been flagged by a mod…

lucb1e
> it looks to me like stories that are rising up the page, rather than dropping or stationary.

The bike story went from 12 to 13 but was still black. Might only be recomputed periodically, but it doesn't seem to make sense to update this at a different frequency than the rank itself.

> Could it be a feature that is usually visible to mods or highly ranked users but has accidentally been opened up?

That has also crossed my mind. Whatever it is, I'm intrigued now!

polote
A post can be black on the front while not be black when reading from /active or /classic. So this not something tied to a post. And it seems to change every minute or something like that
lucb1e
It might just be enabled for the front page only, not that it has nothing to do with the post itself. Also because it colors the rank rather than something about the post, and the front page rank is code that runs only on the front page. You could also be right, of course, but it doesn't really seem to fit the evidence.
Uptrenda
Whatever feature this is for its too subtle to notice. I would have never noticed the difference without you pointing it out.
lucb1e
A friend said the same. I'm curious how much of that is display contrast or environmental lighting and how much of it is personal (noticing odd details, quick DIY autism test (jk)).
krapp
Unfortunately, that's a design problem for Hacker News in general - people will be here for years and not notice features that were right in front of them.
doctor_eval
Yeah I’ve been a member 2 years and lurker much longer and only last week I worked out what “prev” and “next” do.

That might say more about me than HN tho :)

lolinder
I didn't see prev and next buttons until a few weeks ago. It's possible that I was just blind, but I think that they and the "context" button are new.
vulcan01
Yes, root, parent, next, prev, and context are all pretty new.
notinty
There really aren't many buttons, we've just stopped seeing.
krapp
People have also not noticed the thread folding link after it's been there for a while, or the fact that the site has a footer with links. It's difficult to notice things in a grey-on-grey color scheme.
j-bos
One of the coolest things about HN, imho, the content is never overshadowed by the ui/ux.
dang
Oops, that was supposed to be moderator-only. There are lots of complexities like that in the mod UI to help those of us whose job it is to stare at the front page. (I've done a s/are/were/ to the title above to preserve its accuracy.)

In this case, the rank was black when it was the highest rank reached by the story so far.

I'm trying to figure out good visual ways to make use of the information (1) highest rank reached by story; (2) amount of time the story has spent on the front page; (3) amount of time since story reached its highest rank.

lucb1e
Darn, I was really hoping (if the mod-only thing theory turned out to be the correct one) for something more sinister than "highest rank so far". Maybe a clever algorithm to detect a higher ratio of comments by exceptionally affable users.

Thanks for the answer :)

sova
His name is dang not darn :P
zitterbewegung
Was gonna say they missed out on starting the response as Dang,
jedberg
At first I was concerned that you're deploying code on Saturday. Until I remembered that we always like deploying code on reddit on Friday afternoon because the lowest usage of the week was Saturday. :)
Crazyontap
Great to see the mods here are also programmers which probably why the site is moderated so well. If you know how the code works you can do so many little optimisations like these to help with your work (as opposed to asking the IT team to make such tweaks for you).
dang
I couldn't agree more - I think it's a core aspect of HN.
Tomte
> good visual ways to make use of the information

<marquee> and <blink>, obviously.

sanjuqq
Since we're talking about the website, does anyone know why the only available theme is flashbang white?