Actually, I haven't really found this to be true. The HN algorithm does some sort of thing where it spotlights new comments at the top of the stack to see how well they perform before pushing them down. There have been a number of times when I was very clearly late to the conversation but my comments apparently got enough upvotes when they were spotlighted to stay on top.
It feels to me like the comment sorting is actually dictated by a rough calculation of impressions / votes rather than just raw votes, which is why this sort of thing can happen.
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Actually, I haven't really found this to be true. The HN algorithm does some sort of thing where it spotlights new comments at the top of the stack to see how well they perform before pushing them down. There have been a number of times when I was very clearly late to the conversation but my comments apparently got enough upvotes when they were spotlighted to stay on top.
It feels to me like the comment sorting is actually dictated by a rough calculation of impressions / votes rather than just raw votes, which is why this sort of thing can happen.