4 ms·

No comments actually improves the ranking

• grzm 10y ago
  Oh, really? That's really interesting! Do you have a reference for this?
  • jacobolus 10y ago
    If there are more comments than upvotes, a story will rapidly fall off the front page. It’s supposed to be a measure to prevent “flamewars”, but often results in good discussions being black-holed.
    • douche 10y ago
      Agree completely. It also tends to clog the front page with neutral stories that nobody cares enough about to comment on.
    • cglace 10y ago
      Yeah, it's pretty annoying when a good story gets knocked from the front page all because people actually want to talk about it.
  • revelation 10y ago
    The exact calculation is notoriously unclear (presumably by design, or you could game it) but there is a penalty for what the algorithm deems "flamewar" topics which cause many comments in a short time. There is some analysis here: http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really-works.html http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really... And it's certainly true from experience.
    • grzm 10y ago
      Huh. Makes sense. Thanks for the reference!