How does the front page work?

How exactly does the damn page work? At the very top there is a big picture that links to a story and three stories to the side. Then down at the bottom there is a list of the newest stories which can be separated into commentaries, reviews and whatnot, and to the right some videos. Fine I get all that...

What I don't get is what makes a story be a big top picture story? Is it the currently most popular one? Is it arbitrarily selected? Why do sometimes the three stories to the right of the big picture change ot a new news yet other times the list at the bottom gets new material and the big pictures at the top don't? Why did it take so long for the Age of Reckoning video to appear as the #1 video?

I just wanna know what makes everything appear so that I can be sure not to miss anything.

No one? No mods or anyone who knows?

My (uneducated) guess is that the GB staff themselves decides which stories make it into the top section.

There's a bit said about it here, if you haven't read it. It doesn't go into specifics, but I take from it that it's as Kazona said: They manually choose which ones are displayed.

"My (uneducated) guess is that the GB staff themselves decides which stories make it into the top section."