When sorting by hot, I get posts with 1 upvote and no comments near the top. And it is above a post from the same community (nieuws) that has 2 upvotes. Seems to be broken.
Yep, intentionally so. When someone asks about "the hottest fashions," they don't care about what was hot then years ago, they mean what's hot right now. So it's recent posts that are getting a lot of positive attention.
Also, FWIW, I’m fairly sure Voyager doesn’t do the sorting, but rather, the instances themselves do it using Lenny’s built in algorithm. So there is nothing Voyager can do about the calculation.
I agree with your definition of hot. My view is that a 10 minute old post with a single upvote does not meet that definition. The one upvote a post gets when it is created does not mean positive interaction. Too much bias towards new and not enough towards upvote count.
Edit:
This lemmy doc confirms it is intentional. And a lemmy issue, not voyager specific.