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So, a massively, massively popular site that makes it business by ranking the user generated content on it by importance... is wrong. > Maybe there is no moral
by shadowmint 13y ago
So, a massively, massively popular site that makes it business by ranking the user generated content on it by importance... is wrong.
> Maybe there is no moral. Reddit screwed up.
...or maybe, they know what they're doing.
Maybe not. ...but when you supply a bugfix, the onus is on the submitter to demonstrate that 1) the fix fixes the problem and 2) that it doesn't break anything else.
It would appear that no effort has been made at (2), to demonstrate that the proposed change would not have an adverse affect on other high-vote rankings.
To be fair, it would have been nice to see the pull request response (https://github.com/reddit/reddit/pull/583 https://github.com/reddit/reddit/pull/583) mention that an alternative algorithm choice would have to be demonstrably better in a large scale analysis before they would even dream of changing their core ranking algorithm, but it's not unfair for them to take that stance.
It's like asking Google to change their page rank algorithm because you don't like it.
- lectrick 13y ago> the onus is on the submitter to demonstrate that 1) the fix fixes the problem and 2) that it doesn't break anything else. No. The onus is on Reddit's test suite which, ostensibly, would cover voting (one of the core features/functionality of the site!) to demonstrate this. Or are you suggesting that he didn't run the full build?
- ryanobjc 13y agoAh yes the tests pass. Now it is time to relax and veg out. Oh wait, the test suite doesnt actually guarantee bug free software? Worse, test suites dont protect you from bugs in the specs? Well I can tell we are going to have a rough night ahead...
- shadowmint 13y agoDid /r2/tests suddenly get a hundred new awesome tests in the last 6 months? It's pretty... bare. Or it was last time I looked. Pull request -> should include tests if relevant ones don't already exist.
- lectrick 13y ago> It's pretty... bare. Or it was last time I looked. Well then, that's running with scissors as far as any modern legit open source project is concerned. That should be the VERY FIRST thing rectified.
- simonh 13y agoGoogle change pagerank all the time, so clearly they aren't terrified of changing it. Presumably they have ways such as testing methods to mitigate the risks. If Reddit don't, then they have a much bigger long term problem on their hands than this one glitch.
- nine_k 13y agoOr maybe Reddit do have something like A/B testing for ranking algorithms, but every other algorithm they tried was found less successful?