Popularity Algorithms
I'm working on a site with a "digg-reddit-dzone-like" feature. How should I select the front page stories? Are there any standard references for this type of algorithms? Best practices? Caveats? Any Hacker suggestions?
i see these three components as being the basic broth for a good "organic ranking" site:
1. time since the article was submitted, probably represented logarithmically.
2. how many votes came in, measured by how quickly they came in from the articles submission and how far apart each vote is.
3. the "weight" of the users voting on the article.5. Votes vs views.
I would say just do something which takes into account how quickly items are getting voted on and how many comments vs. votes it has. Also take into account sometimes there will be more people on site than others; If you get a swarm of people around the same time (i.e. launch), some items submitted around that time will get tons more votes than things submitted an hour ago - those stories may not have been exactly "less popular", just had less users to make the votes count.