Because that's how the algorithm works.
They were both posted 21 hours ago, and posts older than 18 hours start to decay and get pushed down the hot list to give priority to news rising posts.
One of the 5 is the Happy Birthday Poal sticky.
A global sticky post isn't in the Top 5 list because it's a sticky, but because of its score. So if you wait long enough, it will be gone from the Top 5 list, but will still remain in /all/hot.
Thank you for that info on how the top 5 is determined and the nature of how all/hot sorts...hottness. I understand it better now.
I did not state the sticky was in the top 5 due to being a sticky, just that it is in the top 5 and is also the sticky. I did not mean for it to be read that way, but noted it being the sticky as an identifier of that being the thread I was talking about being in the top 5.
It took months to fine tune the algorithm to adapt to the increase of user base (and thus votes). I believe 18 hours is a fair share of exposure before posts give a way for newer ones.
(post is archived)