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Now it also considers among other things the average comment score of the submitter. Does this create a rich-get-richer type scenario, where users with high av
by chaosmachine 16y ago
Now it also considers among other things the average comment score of the submitter.
Does this create a rich-get-richer type scenario, where users with high averages get more exposure, thus leading to higher averages?
- j_baker 16y agoIt might. But that's only an issue if the rich don't deserve to get rich.
- ebiester 16y agoAlternative, it keeps away those who deserve to get rich but cannot overcome the artificial market barriers.
- thefool 16y agoExactly, in this, the rich only get richer if they continue posting valid comments. Otherwise they get poor real fast.
- mooneater 16y agoNo, they get poor based on how many previous comments are being averaged in. So someone with a huge number of highly rated comments, could make a lot of dumb comments before it started hurting them. I'm sure pg will come up with an appropriate formula.
- hxa7241 16y agoHold on, that begs the question -- how do we know who deserves? that is the problem. The whole thing has a circular dependency: if ranking acts as a filter, then higher rank means more readers, and that in turn means more upvotes and so a higher ranking. It is probably not so much the top being undeserving, but that deserving stuff gets missed. This seems to be a fundamental weakness in all similar 'ranking' systems, but I am not sure of the full character and implications... (There is certainly a substantial component of being an automated system of 'social-proof'. And the filtering can never be entirely effective: if you show everyone only the good stuff, the filtering would not get done at all.)
- presidentender 16y agoThe advantage here is that pg is giving an advantage to high averages, not high point totals. So there's less incentive to be a reddit/digg style poweruser looking for one upvote on thousands of comments, and more incentive to say something truly insightful from time to time.
- techiferous 16y ago"rich-get-richer" An alternative way to think about it is that it adds more stability to the system, for better or for worse.
- pg 16y agoYou can check by looking at the average comment scores on http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders (the second column). They haven't changed much as far as I can tell.
- ivankirigin 16y agoWhat is your average comment score? Any exception for your account? I don't think there needs to be one, just curious.
- timf 16y agohttp://top.searchyc.com/users_by_average_points_per_comment http://top.searchyc.com/users_by_average_points_per_comment http://searchyc.com/pg http://searchyc.com/pg (you will notice the numbers are different on the HN leaders page for people, I think perhaps searchyc is an all-time average?)
- philwelch 16y agoSearchYC seems to be off on its karma counts--some of my comments, HN and SYC disagree on the score.
- pg 16y ago10.2 as of now. No, the ranking algorithm treats every account the same.
- horseass 16y agoboobie testucles boobie testucles boobie testucles One thing I like about hacker news is that some complete moron, like me, can write 'boobie testucles' in reply to the topmost comment, thus keeping the reply visible to all on top even if its voted down by the retarded masses who don't know what a good reply really is. Man, lisp sucks. Please vote my reply up, thanks!
- thunk 16y agoYou make a reasonable point in an, uh, illustrative way (they say "show, don't tell", right?). The vertical arrangement of comments by preorder traversal of comment trees gives some low quality comments "unfair" visibility. I don't see any solution (that maintains readability) apart from moving into a second or third dimension. The question is, is it a big enough problem to merit such a drastic response? Probably not.