As just one example, I've wondered if for instance there was a front page article about a bad quarterly report, or a corruption scandal, and I wanted it to drop off the front page fast, would it work to simply introduce some flame-war-inducing topic via a tangential comment? If the company in question was Microsoft, for example, you could pretty easily slide in some dig against Linux, begin a flame war, and then as I understand it (and as I've witnessed many times) the HN ranking algorithm would start to push it down.
Of course this discussion is not meant to encourage any bad behavior, but as a security exercise it seems useful. I also am unaware of and interested in what HN has made publicly known about their ranking algorithm, and how this squares with best practices as far as thwarting manipulation.
