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"Controversial" gives a boost to polarizing comments, but it doesn't help with the fact that posts with ever so slightly unpopular opinions get downvoted, and u

"Controversial" gives a boost to polarizing comments, but it doesn't help with the fact that posts with ever so slightly unpopular opinions get downvoted, and unless they are somewhat polarizing won't get any upvotes. When I look at my post history, I see that my most thoughtful and balanced comments are either ignored or downvoted. My most upvoted comments are usually rants that lots of people agree with, but I don't consider them worthy of the attention.

dredmorbius 4y ago
You're right that it's not perfect, and that there's a fair bit of content that gets ranked "controversial" which has few merits. But some that's valid-but-unpopular also shows up. The specific characteristics can vary a lot by subreddit. You can also use this sort on a personal page (https://old.reddit.com/u/<username> https://old.reddit.com/u/<username>) to see which of their comments / submissions stirs up dispute. Collaborative filtering / user-based moderation absolutely has its issues and limitations. You can eke some more information from it through the "controversial" sort, however. Crowd-pleasing ranking systems like voting tend to surface crowd-pleasing content. (There are reasons I spend little time on Reddit these days.)