Randall does a pretty good rundown of why the old comment ranking algorithm (which is similar to HN's) was bad here: http://blog.reddit.com/2009/10/reddits-new

Randall does a pretty good rundown of why the old comment ranking algorithm (which is similar to HN's) was bad here: http://blog.reddit.com/2009/10/reddits-new-comment-sorting-system.html http://blog.reddit.com/2009/10/reddits-new-comment-sorting-s... I wonder if pg would consider implementing the confidence sort on HN. It's certainly been effective on reddit.