it was never real, they admitted the number was a "score" and not a vote tally.

The longer a thread was around, the less 1 up/down impacted the "score"

They can tweak the weights of the arrows on a per-sub basis. When that didn't work, they created "popular". When that didn't work, they just banned subs from the frontpage. When that didn't work they quarantined. When that didn't work, they ban.