4 ms·

tl;dr: Posts whose net score ever becomes negative essentially vanish permanently due to a quirk in the algorithm. So an attacker can disappear posts he doesn't

• amerika_blog 13y ago
  Good synopsis. Check out the discussion on Reddit itself: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1si31j/reddits_empire_is_founded_on_a_flawed_algorithm/ http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1si31j/reddits_...
  • dshanahan 13y ago
    Particularly the reddit dev comments here: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1si31j/reddits_empire_is_founded_on_a_flawed_algorithm/cdy2jhh http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1si31j/reddits_...
• raldi 13y ago
  No, they just vanish from the hot page, and it's not necessarily permanent. They're still visible on /new, which allows for upvotes-of-resurrection.
  • yen223 13y ago
    But as the author pointed out, nobody visits /new.
    • __Joker 13y ago
      Lots do. At least two reasons, I can thinks of, 1. If you are a regular to a sub, new will act like RSS feed. You know what to read and where to stop. 2. If you believe in reddit karma, better chance of your comments to be recognised. By the time it hits the front page, more or less it is a comment muddle.
    • ketralnis 13y ago
      Then how do any links get non-zero scores?
      • raldi 13y ago
        Via longstanding glitches, clearly.
      • jeltz 13y ago
        Because posts start out at 1.
    • phildeschaine 13y ago
      Lots of people visit /new. They're called "knights of new". The total number of these people is probably far lower than the front page (where _hot is used), but it's how every submission gets its start.
    • atwebb 13y ago
      Maybe not the /all/new but I pretty much only visit /new on the subs I frequent. It's a much better way of using smaller subs from my perspective. Lots of things never make it fully to the front page of a smaller sub. The drawback is that subs which get caught in a filter appear to show sorted by their submission date and not the mod approval date so you can miss things on /new that might make it to /hot
      • tripzilch 13y ago
        > Maybe not the /all/new but I pretty much only visit /new on the subs I frequent. It's a much better way of using smaller subs from my perspective. And one of the reasons might be that sorting doesn't work quite properly on smaller subreddits?
        • Semaphor 13y ago
          Even if this features didn't exist, something I find interesting but most people don't care about is still easier to find on new.
          • baudehlo 13y ago
            Not just easier, but actually only possible to find on /new.
      • evacuationdrill 13y ago
        This is the right answer. I do this too, because when everything is <10 votes with a few outliers, /new looks close to /hot, but there are more submissions. For subs where the front page changes not hourly, but weekly, it's the only way to get a little freshness.
    • SourPatch 13y ago
      I always visit /new. I don't think I've ever visited /hot.
      • jeltz 13y ago
        /hot is the default for subreddits.
• snorkel 13y ago
  ... And the fix seems so minor, and the bug reporters are providing a patch for it, and they spent more energy arguing against the patch rather than including it. Classic example of developers not wanting to admit when a bug is a bug, and fixing it is easier than arguing not to.