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Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

The word "best" in /best and /bestcomments doesn't mean best, it means most-upvoted. Upvotes, unfortunately, happen for reasons other than bestness.

It's always irritated me but I haven't changed it, out of deference to history and lack of a pithy alternate name. Anyone?

Maybe /up and /upcomments?

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what about /top or /topcomments?

I like that!

/bestcomments (or whatever name may become in the future) had a drawback, I believe. Technically speaking (and generally), the comments in this section are the ones that belong to stories from /best (or highest-upvoted). These stories obviously get more exposure and attention, so their top comments get more upvotes. For instance, a story with 2,000 points might have a comment with 200 points (which is tenth the score of its parent story) that will obviously hit the /bestcomments, while a comment of, say, 50 points on a 150-point story (which is a third) may never have the chance to hit /bestcomments.. Just some thoughts about my daily social network :)

There is probably some sweet spot of n between 0.5 and 2, but not near 1, such that the quotient of comment score^n and thread score^n gives good results.

We do not have downvotes, so no risk of ambiguity: my love for clarity would suggest /voted /upvoted

We do in fact have down votes, you just need 500 (I think?) karma to be able to use it. When you see comments that are not "dead" but are greyed out, they've been downvoted more than they've been upvoted.

Downvotes do exist, but you need to reach 500 karma to unlock them, or at least that's what the rumours say.

I don't have them, but I have seen comments in the negative, so there must be some truth to it

Thank you for correcting me, my bad.

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