It might be that people see this headline and are interested in returning later to skim the book list and all of the other lists linked here in the comments.<p>Upvoting Bill&#x27;s book list might not mean they like his list, think it belongs at the top of HN, or that they even read the blog post. The top-of-front-page ranking could just be the result of a large number of readers upvoting in order to have the discussion show up in their &quot;saved stories&quot;.<p><i>edit</i>: A &quot;save story&quot; button that is independent of the voting&#x2F;ranking mechanism might actually change the front page significantly.