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Did not expect this post from 2010 to hit HN... Happy to see that my content is still useful :)

To add something new to the discussion I think HN should use Reddit's comment sorting algorithm (the confidence sort). It produces way better results than the current algorithm since it will rank the best comments highest regardless of their submission time. Would probably produces an even better comment section here on HN.

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Can't find a reference for this at the moment, but I think PG has since modified the HN ranking code a bit to put interesting stuff at the top. (This is since his last arc dump, so I don't know exactly what it is.)

Also, I think the situation on HN is quite different from reddit because vote totals aren't shown here anymore. It's not clear that you necessarily want to use the same ranking system as on reddit, where current vote counts affect how people vote in the future.

For reference, the mathematical notation of the hot algorithm is from my master thesis[1].

[1]: http://www.duo.uio.no/sok/work.html?WORKID=81971&lang=en

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