No, it shows that people didn't find any of those stories worthy of upvoting.

No, it means that the small subset of the people visiting the new page in that period didn't find any of those stories worthy of upvoting. But as the relationship between people submitting links and people visiting the new page slowly changes the chance of stuff getting lost gets bigger and bigger.

Mahmud pointed out an excellent example of that happening and I have seen plenty of others.

Go visit the last page of the 'new' section and have a look at all the stuff that was lost. It's really a pity.

And plenty of 'fluff' does get upvoted.

Even though one of my sub was on that screenshot 27 minute period of time, I agree with you.

HN only needs 2 votes to get something on the front page. Not all interesting topic will hit the FP, and not everything I consider interesting is also true for others.

Its not perfect system, mostly because, in this case, perfect is subjective.

For instance I absolutely dislike ~90% of Tech Crunch crap posted here, but I have to live with the fact that others find Tech Crunch drama interesting.

You need 2 votes in the first 3-4 minutes or so. After that the number starts increasing. This is just pulling things out of thin air, but from the looks of it, the system increases the amounts every period.

i.e.

   First 2 minutes? 1 upvote.
   4 minutes: 2 upvotes
   6 minutes: 3 upvotes
   8 minutes: 4 upvotes

etc

I don't think it works like that. From what I've observed, it depends far more on the state of the current front page stories. At night, when most of the stories are older, a single upvote on a New story an hour old can put it on the front page. In the daytime, you usually need that first upvote in 15 minutes or so.

But it's not a set time or point scale, it's based on what's currently on the front page, how old those stories are, and how many points they have.

The one thing I do agree with is that after a certain timeframe, I do wish even the most popular stories decayed more quickly.

Really?

I'd say the Sivers and the asmartbear posts would hit the front page, if they were featured there even for a second.

The asmartbear post on what you need to do at a tradeshow is now at 2 points, and no where near the front page.

The Sivers post on building intimacy is now at 3 points, and is also nowhere near the front page

There's only so much room on the front page. If you featured something new automatically on the front page, then something else falls off. No doubt people would then complain about that.

You could make the front page longer, of course, but then I'm sure some set of people would complain about that.