Reports, reputation and community governance are the next milestone. For now the basics hold: one vote per person, self-voting is blocked, and duplicate links are rejected.
Every submission begins in Upcoming. Votes raise its score; when it reaches the threshold it is promoted to Published automatically. Help curate by voting on what deserves the front page.
hot = score / pow(hours + 2, gravity). New stories with many votes climb; old ones sink. The gravity and the promotion threshold are operator-tunable in the admin settings.