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I like the idea and would be happy to see it expanded upon. I know that HN already downranks posts that get a lot more comments than upvotes because these tend

I like the idea and would be happy to see it expanded upon. I know that HN already downranks posts that get a lot more comments than upvotes because these tend to be highly controversial, political etc. I sort of wish those posts were not in my default filter at all, it's easy to get sucked in but it's rare that I learn anything valuable from them.

bookofjoe 4y ago
This: "...HN already downranks posts that get a lot more comments than upvotes..." is news to me. Thank you.
- seedie 4y ago
  minimaxir's "List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors" proposes something similar. https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#flame-war-detector https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#flame-... But I don't know if this is based on evidence.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    I'm pretty sure some topics are just outright muted to prevent abuse (not that it's a bad thing). For example, if you were on /new over the past 6 months, it was extremely common to see a "Twitter"-titled article get 20+ upvotes and never see the frontpage. People were outright obsessing over Twitter, posting everything they could find, no matter how benign or uninteresting it's content was. Locking the topic until verifiably interesting things happen was a great solution. It probably works similarly for other keywords, too.
  - bookofjoe 4y ago
    Thanks for pointing me here. Much that is new to this longtime poster/reader.
  - gus_massa 4y ago
    It was published in the public version of 2009 https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/blob/9f2e1dd53b5b66bb4d65a33d09d403f1a656f8f6/news.arc#L293-L306 https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/blob/9f2e1dd53b5b66bb4... Look for "contro-factor" (i.e. controversial-factor). This is old code, and the mods make tweaks here and there without warning, so the details may have changed. (I'm not sure if gravity changed from 1.8 to 1.6 (???).) I didn't test it personally, but it feels like HN is using something very similar. And there are a few black box analysis of the sorting of the front page that got similar results. Also, minimaxir is the kind of person that is probably running an script to use the HN API to verify the claims.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  Usually when you see someone claiming a grand conspiracy by the mods to censor their controversial submission, the real answer is likely this.
kirso 4y ago
Didn't this recently happen with StateOfJS? Was kind of weird not seeing it hitting the top... even though it's not that controversial.

bookofjoe 4y ago

This: "...HN already downranks posts that get a lot more comments than upvotes..." is news to me. Thank you.

seedie 4y ago
minimaxir's "List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors" proposes something similar. https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#flame-war-detector https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#flame-... But I don't know if this is based on evidence.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure some topics are just outright muted to prevent abuse (not that it's a bad thing). For example, if you were on /new over the past 6 months, it was extremely common to see a "Twitter"-titled article get 20+ upvotes and never see the frontpage. People were outright obsessing over Twitter, posting everything they could find, no matter how benign or uninteresting it's content was. Locking the topic until verifiably interesting things happen was a great solution. It probably works similarly for other keywords, too.
- bookofjoe 4y ago
  Thanks for pointing me here. Much that is new to this longtime poster/reader.
- gus_massa 4y ago
  It was published in the public version of 2009 https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/blob/9f2e1dd53b5b66bb4d65a33d09d403f1a656f8f6/news.arc#L293-L306 https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/blob/9f2e1dd53b5b66bb4... Look for "contro-factor" (i.e. controversial-factor). This is old code, and the mods make tweaks here and there without warning, so the details may have changed. (I'm not sure if gravity changed from 1.8 to 1.6 (???).) I didn't test it personally, but it feels like HN is using something very similar. And there are a few black box analysis of the sorting of the front page that got similar results. Also, minimaxir is the kind of person that is probably running an script to use the HN API to verify the claims.
the_only_law 4y ago
Usually when you see someone claiming a grand conspiracy by the mods to censor their controversial submission, the real answer is likely this.

kirso 4y ago

Didn't this recently happen with StateOfJS? Was kind of weird not seeing it hitting the top... even though it's not that controversial.