Someone posted on HN a couple weeks back about the story ranking algorithm. PG mentioned that there were some hidden tweaks, but the basic idea was a function of number of votes and age of the article since submission (a "gravitational" term of sorts which drops stories over time).
This type of algorithm explicitly penalizes stories with a pattern like that which you mention. If a post gets little interest initially but later becomes very interesting, it can't possibly do well in the ranking algorithm.
It would be more realistic if the ranking algorithm took into account the age of the votes more than the age of the article. Recent votes can pop an old article back to the front page, but not if that article had a ton of old votes as the "center of mass" (average age) of the votes would still be pretty old.
This type of algorithm explicitly penalizes stories with a pattern like that which you mention. If a post gets little interest initially but later becomes very interesting, it can't possibly do well in the ranking algorithm.
It would be more realistic if the ranking algorithm took into account the age of the votes more than the age of the article. Recent votes can pop an old article back to the front page, but not if that article had a ton of old votes as the "center of mass" (average age) of the votes would still be pretty old.