Are you sure / do you have info that HN doesn't use some kind of "holding pen" for stories to have a fixed amount of time to see if they get a certain % of votes before being kicked down the list?
This is a classic problem with forums, and I wonder if HN already has something in place that you might not have factored in (which could then just be tuned better).
I think there may well be some sort of “holding pen” system. But we don’t have the info. We only know what the “raw” ranking formula is. But the actual rankings differ significantly from what the raw ranking formula says. You can actually see the difference in charts on our site. For example: https://news.social-protocols.org/stats?id=35183317
We have noticed that the “raw” rank (black line) will sometimes initially put a story on page 1, while it still has no the actual rank (orange line). But then sometimes the orange line suddenly jumps up. This seems to support the “holding pen” hypothesis.
This is a classic problem with forums, and I wonder if HN already has something in place that you might not have factored in (which could then just be tuned better).