Something interesting is that the top score seems to have peaked in 2011 with 4339. No score since then broke 4000 and there were two that didn't break 3000.
One interpretetation is that there's a lot more posting going on and it's hard for a single post to maintain a top spot as well as potential changes to the ranking alogrithm. Another option may be less engaged users. Maybe a mix of both.
It's affected by algorithm changes. For example, the software now downweights any story that's 18 hours or older, with the intention of flushing the front page so that the stories with largest inertia don't just sit there.
I doubt it's that users are less engaged. It appears that HN had its most active Sunday ever today in terms of unique visitors. I've been meaning to look at some graphs of number of comments over time because it feels like those have gone up lately, too. If anybody else wants to make them, the data's public...
Ah interesting. I was thinking even if the algorithm didn't change the volume could have had a side effect on it. Do you expose the history of the algorithm?
It'd be interesting to get a median upvote count for the top 1000 stories by year...Perhaps the algorithm change most noticeably affects the very top end of the scale (e.g. by increasing gravity)...but perhaps this is less pronounced in the middle of the pack of top posts.
The other thing to consider is that no one of Steve Jobs's stature in the tech community has died since Steve Jobs. Or at least, died tragically. I hope Bill Gates (and his philanthropy) go on for many more decades, but I imagine his passing would be on notable to the tech community on the same scale as Jobs's.
Although maybe I'm completely overlooking someone who has died since Jobs, I would think the top deaths in each year would be among the top posts (e.g. Leonard Nimoy in 2015). My second most up-voted submission is Ray Bradbury's death...my top submission being a major drop in Linkedin stock price...Linkedin/MongoDB bashing is about as timeless as death :)
One interpretetation is that there's a lot more posting going on and it's hard for a single post to maintain a top spot as well as potential changes to the ranking alogrithm. Another option may be less engaged users. Maybe a mix of both.