Upvotes, Downvotes, and Hot Ranking

A plain explanation of how the feed decides what you see first, and why old posts sometimes come back.

PairLume Community uses two vote signals and a time factor. Upvotes push a post up. Downvotes push it down. Time slowly pulls everything back to the middle, so a post that was hot yesterday will not still be at the top tomorrow unless it keeps earning votes.

The feed defaults to Hot, which is the balanced view. New shows you every post as it arrives, useful if you want to help people who have not been seen yet. Top shows the highest scoring posts over a window you pick.

Downvotes are not a disagree button. They are for posts that break Room norms or waste the Room’s time. If you disagree with a take, reply and explain. If you downvote because you disagree, you weaken the signal for everyone.

Sometimes an older post reappears in Hot because a burst of new comments and upvotes revives it. This is intentional. Good questions deserve to be found twice.