Ask HN: Is HN implementing a new comment ranking system? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is HN implementing a new comment ranking system?

9 pointsSeanDav4 comments

My comment on this thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6271264

was top rank for a while and then suddenly bottom ranked, even though more plus votes had been added. I am not for a moment complaining as I believe that some sort of system that removes top rank comments from remaining top ranked is desirable in many circumstances.

In some threads top comments tend to remain top because people read and rate them first, even though they may be far from the most "valuable" comment. They tend to stay top ranked because of inertia.

I am surprised that my comment was considered "worthless" but I don't care, just curious to find out if some tweaking is going on with the comment ranking - a good thing in my opinion.

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I've seen this a few times on my own comments recently, though I haven't been tracking them in a systematic way (because...I mean...it's just karma :) ). It used to be that I could have a mediocre comment atop a thread, above other recent comments that most likely had more upvotes, and I figured that was a result of my decent averaged-Karma comment (note: this, IMO, was not a positive effect of the algorithm and I felt guilty about making non-substantial comments if they were going to stick to the top).

But now I've noticed that many of my comments pretty much drop to the bottom of the page, no matter what my avg. karma is or the quality of ongoing discussions. I just posted a comment in a relatively new discussion that got 3-4 upvotes in a few minutes (which is pretty fast for a Sunday afternoon) and yet my comment was second-to-last, and was even below a comment that had 0 or negative karma (i.e. had been slightly grayed out).

I figured I was being penalized for something or other, and that I probably deserved it anyway.

These meta-posts have become so frequent as to become irritating. It's compounded by "self" posts seemingly being weighted positively in the item ranking algo.

Why can't you email info@ycombinator.com as per the guidelines?

Guessing that it may be an attempt to mitigate the practice of responding to top-ranked comments, in order to get your own reply more visibility and thus (hopefully) more karma.

I've also noticed that some of my comments now seem to be positioned lower than in the past. I had thought that my account might have been flagged or marked somehow, since I definitely don't mind posting a controversial opinion every now and again.

But, a change in the basic comment ranking algorithm seems more likely, especially if other people are also noticing a change. I guess that's actually comforting to know... :-)

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