> Submission time is not such a good indicator of who interacts with a post because a post could be active for 12-24 hours

Posts that make it to the front page are good for 12-4 hours, I agree.

But if a post gets less than 4 upvotes in the first 15ish minutes, my experience is that 99% of the time it won't get to the front page.

Every few days I submit one that doesn’t get a lot of traction but I come back in 2-3 days and it is on the home page, I think these are responsible for maybe 1/3 of my karma but well under 5% of actual submissions. I dunno if these got resubmitted but still attributed to me or if it is part of dang’s “a good submission got missed” program.