Ndtyjky

Stack Exchange has a special feature that displays the hottest questions from its 170 or more sites across the network, it's called Hot Network Questions or HNQ for short.

Most users will see to their right a short list of “hot” questions but HNQ also has its own page, which complicates things a little, so do the most popular/highest rated questions go on or in HNQ? Do they appear in or on a list?

a question appearing on/in HNQ

a question was on/in HNQ

questions listed in/on HNQ

questions can linger in/on HNQ

I searched the following words on in list preposition in the EL&U archives and this post turned up
When should I use "in" or "on"? the accepted answer said

For my dialect, it's: "good luck on" and "on the list".

Does Alan Hogue's answer suggest there are no fundamental differences?

Are there any differences in usage between American and British English?

Flipping over to Google Ngram it appears that in the list and on the list are used fairly equally with little difference between BrE and AmE.

Myself, as a BrE user, I would speak of items in the HNQ list that is on the HNQ page.

One of the problems with prepositions is that they are polysemous, some argue so polysemous that they effectively have no meaning - delexicalised - and others (I remember Lakoff being one) suggested a 'prototypes' approach in which each preposition has some core characteristic that is present in all uses. Lindstromberg tried to apply this to 'on' and concluded that he couldn't even begin to find a core characteristic that would embrace both "on the table" and "the car sped on".

Despite this, I think the prototype idea has merit. In a box and in trouble both suggest being surrounded, and so does in a list. Yet people do say on the guest list and on the no fly list. Both of these seem to be connected with permission, either granting it or refusing it. Maybe it is taking in a sense of 'invitation' (or 'anti-invitation', whatever one of those is called), so a name is on the invitation as in printed on its surface, or on a ticket, and this is being transferred to on a list if that list gives or refuses permission to enter.

I believe it is "On" because here we are dealing with HNQ as a position where the question is located. So, we say:

The most popular/highest rated questions on HNQ.

Exactly as we say "the most popular series on HBO", or "a question on page 12".

It depends on what type of object you infer HNQ to be.

If you infer HNQ as HNQ (list), then, as a collection or set, the correct usage is "in the HNQ (list)."

If you infer HNQ as HNQ (page), then, as a surface, the correct usage is "on the HNQ (page)." The only time this is applicable is if you are referring to the panel/surface area/page that the HNQ (List) resides on.

The problem seems to be that just saying HNQ is ambiguous, even though it probably shouldn't be. When you look at the acronym, the noun is Questions, which is a set of singular questions. This should preempt any ambiguity as the base type is a set of questions. Individual questions are either in the set or not in the set. Without additional qualifiers such as page, (List) should be the default interpretation.