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Hot Sorting

Hyrum Graff·8/7/2014, 5:46:23 PM·3 votes·3,756 views

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but currently it appears like the "Hot" sorting is based on some combination of the following factors.

  • Votes
  • Replies
  • Time since posting

I'm concerned that this gives "Hot" an unfair bias towards threads that are posted during peak hours. I'll elaborate:

If a post is made, say, at 1pm EST, which is generally a lull, it stays on the front page for a while, because there aren't many people making posts that would drive it off. However, when people start coming online and making posts, it gets pushed off the home page very quickly, because it's already several hours old and its 'newness' is no longer enough to outcompete the super-new, or the old, but high-vote, high-activity threads, given the influx of competition for the front page.

By contrast, a thread created at primetime gets longer time on the home page during the peak of the day, because its newness can outcompete the old-popular threads.

It makes me wonder whether both threads are getting similar levels of visibility given all other metrics are the same. Could you also add in a "# of view" metric to determine how long a thread stays on the front page of "Hot" for?

Cheers, Hyrum Graff

11 Comments

Daen8/7/2014, 6:08:21 PM1 votes

I'm not sure if this is something that can be solved, to be honest. The high-level direction of the platform seems to be allowing activity to be the main metric for visibility, and more activity will naturally happen during peak hours. Let's theorize this is in fact a problem; what would you suggest as a solution?

It's been said a few times that the goal is to allow players to individually select what they want to see and what they don't. I have yet to see how this will be implemented, but it might address your concern... shrugs

# of views metric

I think this has been discussed briefly, there's a pro and a con there. Being able to see view counts could be a decent indicator of interest, but it could also bias thread participants before even entering a thread. What are your thoughts on that?