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I thought about it while writing this post. It would be useful to have a decay factor for PageRank. In simple words, if someone wants to maintain their PR score

I thought about it while writing this post. It would be useful to have a decay factor for PageRank. In simple words, if someone wants to maintain their PR score, they need to actively engage in the HN community.

dsr_ 4y ago
You can put epicycle around epicycle, but there's a lot of computational efficiency in a score which can be calculated from an integer and a timestamp.
buran77 4y ago
> if someone wants to maintain their PR score, they need to actively engage Wouldn't that encourage people to "actively engage" even when they have nothing to say just to keep their score? Goodhart's law comes into mind here. People who want to stay relevant on this site will take your measure as their target. There's no system that can't be gamed if you know the rules. But the more "rock solid" you try to make those rules, the more you embed intrinsic discrimination between participants. You put "Proof of Work" in the rules and you alienate newcomers while all the rest do "busywork". Your own comments and submissions would sink like a stone because you didn't engage enough, regardless of how interesting your points are.
- vignesh_warar 4y ago
  I think this part of the post answers your question. > Will I ever publicly write about how HN ranks posts if I am Dang (HN moderator)? No, because Pagerank can be manipulated by people despite its reputation. In fact, Pagerank is being exploited for years. Moreover, there are financial incentives for companies to get on the first page in HN.
  - buran77 4y ago
    > Will I ever publicly write about how HN ranks posts if I am Dang (HN moderator)? No Lack of transparency is not a solution, and certainly not one that will sell well in a place where "security by obscurity" is disdained and open source cherished. It's particularly bad when you're dealing with a high profile site filled with intelligent people who would most likely make short work of reverse engineering just enough of the algorithm to understand how it works.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - bookofjoe 4y ago
    With 100% certainty dang ("Dang") read this comment.
    - vignesh_warar 4y ago
      I would be really happy to know his thoughts.
      - bookofjoe 4y ago
        This: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/the-lonely-work-of-moderating-hacker-news https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th... https://archive.ph/V9z3G https://archive.ph/V9z3G is as close as you're likely to get.
      - lenocinor 4y ago
        You can write hn@ycombinator.com . I’ve chatted with dang on that email address several times.

dsr_ 4y ago

You can put epicycle around epicycle, but there's a lot of computational efficiency in a score which can be calculated from an integer and a timestamp.

buran77 4y ago

> if someone wants to maintain their PR score, they need to actively engage Wouldn't that encourage people to "actively engage" even when they have nothing to say just to keep their score? Goodhart's law comes into mind here. People who want to stay relevant on this site will take your measure as their target. There's no system that can't be gamed if you know the rules. But the more "rock solid" you try to make those rules, the more you embed intrinsic discrimination between participants. You put "Proof of Work" in the rules and you alienate newcomers while all the rest do "busywork". Your own comments and submissions would sink like a stone because you didn't engage enough, regardless of how interesting your points are.

vignesh_warar 4y ago
I think this part of the post answers your question. > Will I ever publicly write about how HN ranks posts if I am Dang (HN moderator)? No, because Pagerank can be manipulated by people despite its reputation. In fact, Pagerank is being exploited for years. Moreover, there are financial incentives for companies to get on the first page in HN.
- buran77 4y ago
  > Will I ever publicly write about how HN ranks posts if I am Dang (HN moderator)? No Lack of transparency is not a solution, and certainly not one that will sell well in a place where "security by obscurity" is disdained and open source cherished. It's particularly bad when you're dealing with a high profile site filled with intelligent people who would most likely make short work of reverse engineering just enough of the algorithm to understand how it works.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- bookofjoe 4y ago
  With 100% certainty dang ("Dang") read this comment.
  - vignesh_warar 4y ago
    I would be really happy to know his thoughts.
    - bookofjoe 4y ago
      This: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/the-lonely-work-of-moderating-hacker-news https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th... https://archive.ph/V9z3G https://archive.ph/V9z3G is as close as you're likely to get.
    - lenocinor 4y ago
      You can write hn@ycombinator.com . I’ve chatted with dang on that email address several times.