Ask HN: Why does HN not use similar algorithm for comments as submissions?

2 pointskyle_t3 comments

HN's algorithm for ranking submissions is as effective of any I've seen for UGC websites, but comment ranking seems very heavily weighted to first submitted.

Perhaps HN does this already and time is just less of a factor than for submissions?

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comment ranking seems very heavily weighted to first submitted

Comment rating used to be much weighted to first submitted, implicitly, because later submitted comments almost never got enough karma to move into visibility. Something was done to the comment karma algorithm in the last year or two to make recency LESS weighted than before, and I think it has improved the quality of comments in many threads.

The following links are very old posts by pg, so we can't assume the algorithms stated are still accurate. None the less, they should give you a rough idea of what was tweaked to put less weight on time.

2074 days ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38704

908 days ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781417

Also, it's kinda neat to see the progression by comparing the two.

Thank you for the links. I was trying to find a 'source' but came up empty handed.

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