Well their observation is completely wrong. Timing is the most important factor which matters. I have seen thousands of extremely good non-political, neutral, tech related articles not getting a single upvote if it is submitted at times most of US/Western Europe is sleeping.
I initially named the post "Mercurial being rewritten in Rust" and that's how it made it to the front page, if I recall correctly, close to the first spot, even.
As soon as mods renamed it, it dropped like a rock.
