Help:Front Page Story

At ArmchairGM, everyone is an editor. That you have probably figured out by now. What that additionally means, however, is that no one person controls where content goes. There is no editor in chief to decide what news and opinion articles are worthy of being placed on the front page. There is not even a team of people making this decision. The decision is made automatically based on that article's "score," which is a function of the number of votes and comments that page receives.

The formula is simple. It is votes plus .25*comments. Only one comment per user counts, though, because no one wants a comment-spammer raising the score of an article. The only other wrinkle to the formula is that we account for the article's age -- we don't want something that is very old suddenly picking up a lot of votes and comments and coming back from the dead.

When an article hits the requisite score -- which changes rather often -- the article gets tagged as a "front page" story. The most recent fifteen stories are published on the front page in reverse chronological order.

And again, this is all automatic. No editor or publisher can trump the will of the users.