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Ask HN: Was the number of comments removed from ranking system?
I noticed that there a few old (10h+) submissions with moderate amount (90-100) of upvotes and comments on the front page.
I remembered that it used to be that the ranking will be inversely proportional to both time and number of comments (I can't find it anywhere in FAQ now), which would render these submissions lowly ranked due to high number of comments. Was the ranking system changed?
- Tomte 11y agoI doubt that number of comments ever mattered, except that a comment also acts as an upvote.
- brudgers 11y agoMy impression is that there is some degree of correlation between threads with high numbers of comments and the comments exhibiting unproductive behaviors. Correspondingly, this makes it more likely that the story will be flagged. Likewise I think there is some correlation between stories that are "more mainstream news" and high numbers of comments exhibiting unproductive behaviors: these stories are even more likely to be flagged. I've never seen anything suggesting the raw number of comments affects score negatively.