It happened that I did post my first node here at the Monastery in the same thread, and the exceptionally high rep my post got (and other replies too) made me think and sleep over it, and I belive I've come come to some explanation.

Yes, the topic played it's part, but I think it's not entirely responsible for the high reps. For that, all the stars had to be properly aligned. Monks may not be aware of the fact that the story was not only frontpaged, but it stayed on top of the front page for more than one day! With the favourable time, space and topic combined, the story had sizable exposure (best_seat x long_time x lure_factor).

When monks see that a question has many replies, they infer that there's lively discussion going on, and they click. There were many replies in the beginning (there was no definitive solution, some proposed solutions were flawed, the possibility of DoS attacks was pointed out etc.) This, together with the top exposure created a positive feedback environment that brought in more visits and more replies (and more votes).

I could elaborate on this but I'm afraid of giving birth to Yet Another Crackpot Theory (YACT) (tm).

In reply to Re: Tracking popularity of Perl discussion topics by calin
in thread Tracking popularity of Perl discussion topics by allolex

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