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

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).

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 · 4 years ago

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 · 4 years ago

His name is dang not darn :P

jedberg · 4 years ago

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 · 4 years ago

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 · 4 years ago

I couldn't agree more - I think it's a core aspect of HN.

Tomte · 4 years ago

> good visual ways to make use of the information

<marquee> and <blink>, obviously.

jareklupinski · 4 years ago

faster post-mortem than aws

best admin

Uptrenda · 4 years ago

Whatever feature this is for its too subtle to notice. I would have never noticed the difference without you pointing it out.

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 · 4 years ago

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 · 4 years ago

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 :)

notinty · 4 years ago

There really aren't many buttons, we've just stopped seeing.

j-bos · 4 years ago

One of the coolest things about HN, imho, the content is never overshadowed by the ui/ux.

edoceo · 4 years ago

Looks to me to be a "hot" indicator. Like lots of recent upvotes.

samwillis · 4 years ago

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…

> 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!

minimaxir · 4 years ago

On Christmas, the rank numbers alternate between black/green and red.

But this isn't alternation. Very odd.

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 · 4 years ago

Intriguingly, this post was one of them when I saw it. Lol. Maybe dang will show up to explain.

Deleted Comment

teruakohatu · 4 years ago

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.

polote · 4 years ago

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

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.