News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:How Hacker News ranking algorithm works by pg on Monday October 11, 2010 @10:19PM (#1782058)
The gag tag doesn't mean "gagged." It means the post is a gag, in the sense of a joke.

Sorry I can't be more transparent about how contro-factor is calculated, incidentally. Its purpose is to recognize flamewars.

Re:How Hacker News ranking algorithm works by davi on Monday October 11, 2010 @10:53PM (#1782127)
I'm curious about how you evaluate prospective algorithm changes. Do you roll out a change you think should work and then monitor, or do you have a corpus of e.g. flame wars you test against?
Re:How Hacker News ranking algorithm works by pg on Monday October 11, 2010 @10:57PM (#1782138)
There's a repl on the server, and I test tweaks on the live site.
Re:How Hacker News ranking algorithm works by techbio on Friday October 29, 2010 @09:11PM (#1849728)
Do you have a dashboard of some kind to visualize your tests effects? I am curious about the broad kind of insight one could have with such a programmatic access to this community. Perhaps I missed an essay about HN/REPL?