
On Editing Text (Operational Transforms from Category Theory) - tel
http://bosker.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/on-editing-text/
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ColinWright
Nice to see this resurface - I hope it gets as much attention as last time,
perhaps even more now that HN has a larger community.

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tel
Last time I read this I didn't have nearly enough Category Theory beneath me
to get the last half, but now I can read it as a very general way to generate
OT-systems for practically arbitrary "transformation" categories.

I don't know if that means I better understand pushouts or better understand
OT.

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ColinWright
Looking at how this item has fared, it's clear that something or someone has
penalised it[0]. Shame, really, that a genuine technical article has fallen
off the front page like that.

[0] [http://hnrankings.info/7706293/](http://hnrankings.info/7706293/)

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tel
Oh, interesting. I never realized that was a property of voting.

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ColinWright
I don't understand what you mean. An item's ranking is a combination of it's
points, time, and any penalties that get applied. If people flag it then it
gets penalised, or if the mods decide for some reason to apply a penalty then
it gets pushed down in the rankings. Getting votes makes it more likely that
an item will make it to the front page.

Does that make sense?

There are plenty of write-ups about how the ranking system works if you want
to know more. Or email - details in my profile.

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tel
Sorry, I was vague. I didn't realize there was a penalty system that flagging
or modding could invoke. I had never investigated it and always assumed that
if a post was flagged then it'd just be removed from HN.

In retrospect the system makes sense as is, but I'd just never considered it.

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glifchits
+1 for a perfectly cromulent article

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mamcx
I wonder: This could be usefull for compiling code?

