Interestingly enough this doesn't include Hacker News Classic, one of my favourite frontends: https://news.ycombinator.com/classic

I don't understand the difference between this and the regular front page. I can see it has different content, but why? Does it use a larger time factor? It seems like everything there is older, but maybe that's just because it calculates less frequently?

From what I can remember, it uses an older ranking system which is less correlated with upvotes/popularity.

It uses the same ranking system, but only counts votes from very early users. To me the interesting thing is how little it differs from the regular front page, although I think the explanation is disappointingly boring: the main predictor of upvotes—for all users, early or not—is already being on the front page.

It sounds like you guys basically left it in as a cross-check to make sure the community isn't deviating too far from the original premise. Very cool.

Thanks for the explanation!

Thanks! That's one I hadn't encountered! :)