I actually conducted a similar analysis back in December. I was more focused on discovering the topics that most resonated with the community but ended up digging into this phenomenon as well (specifically focusing on the probability of getting over 100 upvotes)
The really interesting thing is that the number of posts were growing exponentially by year, but it was only in 2025 that the probability of landing on the front page dropped meaningfully. I attributed this to macroeconomic climate, and found some (shaky) evidence of voting rings based on the topics that had a unusually high likelihood of gaining 10 points and an unusually low likelihood of reaching 100 points given that they reached 10.
I did not conduct a deep dive into the specific examples: this was my takeaway from a slope plot comparing which topics clear a 10 point threshold (eg escape the new page) vs which topics clear a 100 point threshold.
> Nearly every AI related topic does worse once it clears the 10 point threshold than any other category. This means that either the people looking through the New and Show sections are disproportionately interested in AI. This is very possible, but from my interaction with this crowd from my posts, these users tend to be more technically minded (think DIY hardware, rather than landing-page builders).
It's good to know that this would be helpful. My tendency would be to dig in a bit more into the individual examples that fall into this more suspicious bucket before presenting this evidence formally, but curious if you think these high level results are sufficiently helpful?
No, seriously, you should find out by emailing the mods. Footer contact link. They’re not going to be upset at you bringing tentative concerns about voting rings with shaky evidence, so long as you aren’t knocking down the door with overconfidence and denying how shaky the evidence is — which you clearly aren’t.
I’m not even remotely equipped to judge the veracity of your work, but they are, and that you care at all is, like, 0.000001%. Take the plunge and write them a note (or simply link them your comment thread here with a one sentence FYI email!). It’ll be fine :)
The really interesting thing is that the number of posts were growing exponentially by year, but it was only in 2025 that the probability of landing on the front page dropped meaningfully. I attributed this to macroeconomic climate, and found some (shaky) evidence of voting rings based on the topics that had a unusually high likelihood of gaining 10 points and an unusually low likelihood of reaching 100 points given that they reached 10.
Analysis here if anyone is interested: https://blog.sturdystatistics.com/posts/show_hn/