5 ms·

That's an interesting approach; it would cause comments that are really good to float to the top no matter when they are posted. In terms of Bayes' theorem:

That's an interesting approach; it would cause comments that are really good to float to the top no matter when they are posted. In terms of Bayes' theorem: P(upvote | good post) = P(good post | upvote) * P(upvote) / P(good post) Let's neglect that opinions vary, and assume P(good post | upvote) = 1. P(upvote) should be proportional to P(post is read); but the readership at the bottom of the page (or wherever latecomers are dropped) is quite small. But this begs the question: what does it mean to "float to the top" if highly-rated comments are being placed in a random location?

derefr 13y ago
See also: Reddit's "best" ranking for comments: http://www.redditblog.com/2009/10/reddits-new-comment-sorting-system.html http://www.redditblog.com/2009/10/reddits-new-comment-sortin...
- piyush_soni 13y ago
  Yes, every commenting system which has an 'upvotes' system should learn from reddit's sorting, because it's the only major one I've seen so far which takes care of this 'problem' of early comments get more votes, later ones get buried.
- mcintyre1994 13y ago
  Would it be possible to use that algorithm and get the same sort of 95% confidence here given that many people can't downvote?
  - danford 13y ago
    Is there a resource on how much karma you need to do what on HN and what the username colors mean? I assume green is new, blue is a couple months old and grey is even older?
    - saraid216 13y ago
      Not that I'm aware of. Also, I've never actually seen blue, somehow. I believe that downvoting comes in around 500 at this time. But green is not reliably "new". It tends to be strongly correlated to newly created accounts, but I've seen weird behavior (like a child comment is marked green... whereas the comment thread was started by the same commenter in gray in the first place), which leads me to believe there's something subtler going on. I thus have no idea what the difference in color is supposed to indicate at all.
  - ballard 13y ago
    It would be cool if HN opened up a read API so that folks could build alternate frontends / scoring algos.
    - dang 13y ago
      This is planned.
      - ballard 13y ago
        Cool. Looking forward to it.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  Reddit's algorithm gets around much of the brain-damage of simple vote counts or capped moderation (e.g., the Slashdot method -- utterly broken). What it doesn't address is the quality or relevance of the upvotes themselves. Spend much time on reddit and it's clear that there are a great many people who are voting on stories and content with little regard to its significance or truth. As a measure of popularity or agreement, the metric is ... better than most. As an indicator of true quality it continues to inherit the faults of virtually all online moderation systems. Absent either creating a class of users who are considered "trusted moderators", or a means of finding agreement between a given reader's preferences and those of the raters indicated, that's pretty much a persistent issue. The better subreddits, in my opinion, address this through guidelines, posting policies, and very strict subreddit moderator policing: removing nonconformant or low-quality posts, banning individuals who troll or don't follow posting / commenting guidelines. Even subreddit mods cannot change the voting on submissions or comments themselves (nor can they see who's voted on what), but they can influence what is visible within the sub -- editorial prerogative.
  - vorg 13y ago
    > The better subreddits, in my opinion, address this through guidelines, posting policies, and very strict subreddit moderator policing: removing nonconformant or low-quality posts A moderator deleting someone's comment should be the last resort. It's irritating to spend 5 minutes writing a comment in a subreddit, press post, then see "the comment you're replying to no longer exists" because the moderator decided deleting a thread of 10 comments was more appropriate than taking some time to write a comment with their own opinion. It's also irritating when one's own comment with 4 upvotes is deleted while someone else's comment with 6 downvotes remains untouched although collapsed. This recently happened to me twice, a week apart, on a subreddit I'd been visiting intermittently for the last 4 yrs, and very occasionally commenting in, without any trouble. > Even subreddit mods cannot change the voting on submissions Perhaps this is the real reason a subreddit moderator deletes upvoted comments they don't agree with, while leaving downvoted ones. Downvoting and replying should be the means to control quality, with a moderator deleting a comment as the last resort.
    - 13y ago

derefr 13y ago

See also: Reddit's "best" ranking for comments: http://www.redditblog.com/2009/10/reddits-new-comment-sorting-system.html http://www.redditblog.com/2009/10/reddits-new-comment-sortin...

piyush_soni 13y ago
Yes, every commenting system which has an 'upvotes' system should learn from reddit's sorting, because it's the only major one I've seen so far which takes care of this 'problem' of early comments get more votes, later ones get buried.
mcintyre1994 13y ago
Would it be possible to use that algorithm and get the same sort of 95% confidence here given that many people can't downvote?
- danford 13y ago
  Is there a resource on how much karma you need to do what on HN and what the username colors mean? I assume green is new, blue is a couple months old and grey is even older?
  - saraid216 13y ago
    Not that I'm aware of. Also, I've never actually seen blue, somehow. I believe that downvoting comes in around 500 at this time. But green is not reliably "new". It tends to be strongly correlated to newly created accounts, but I've seen weird behavior (like a child comment is marked green... whereas the comment thread was started by the same commenter in gray in the first place), which leads me to believe there's something subtler going on. I thus have no idea what the difference in color is supposed to indicate at all.
- ballard 13y ago
  It would be cool if HN opened up a read API so that folks could build alternate frontends / scoring algos.
  - dang 13y ago
    This is planned.
    - ballard 13y ago
      Cool. Looking forward to it.
dredmorbius 13y ago
Reddit's algorithm gets around much of the brain-damage of simple vote counts or capped moderation (e.g., the Slashdot method -- utterly broken). What it doesn't address is the quality or relevance of the upvotes themselves. Spend much time on reddit and it's clear that there are a great many people who are voting on stories and content with little regard to its significance or truth. As a measure of popularity or agreement, the metric is ... better than most. As an indicator of true quality it continues to inherit the faults of virtually all online moderation systems. Absent either creating a class of users who are considered "trusted moderators", or a means of finding agreement between a given reader's preferences and those of the raters indicated, that's pretty much a persistent issue. The better subreddits, in my opinion, address this through guidelines, posting policies, and very strict subreddit moderator policing: removing nonconformant or low-quality posts, banning individuals who troll or don't follow posting / commenting guidelines. Even subreddit mods cannot change the voting on submissions or comments themselves (nor can they see who's voted on what), but they can influence what is visible within the sub -- editorial prerogative.
- vorg 13y ago
  > The better subreddits, in my opinion, address this through guidelines, posting policies, and very strict subreddit moderator policing: removing nonconformant or low-quality posts A moderator deleting someone's comment should be the last resort. It's irritating to spend 5 minutes writing a comment in a subreddit, press post, then see "the comment you're replying to no longer exists" because the moderator decided deleting a thread of 10 comments was more appropriate than taking some time to write a comment with their own opinion. It's also irritating when one's own comment with 4 upvotes is deleted while someone else's comment with 6 downvotes remains untouched although collapsed. This recently happened to me twice, a week apart, on a subreddit I'd been visiting intermittently for the last 4 yrs, and very occasionally commenting in, without any trouble. > Even subreddit mods cannot change the voting on submissions Perhaps this is the real reason a subreddit moderator deletes upvoted comments they don't agree with, while leaving downvoted ones. Downvoting and replying should be the means to control quality, with a moderator deleting a comment as the last resort.
  - 13y ago