
How does news.yc order comments? They seem to randomly reorder themselves between reloads. - jey

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vlad
Guys... it's very simple! For every level in the hierarchy, it ranks the posts
in order of points, and randomizes the order for those that have the same
points.

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timg
Well that's an interesting approach.

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brlewis
My unscientific impression is that it depends on recency, score, and author's
karma, for each comment in the thread.

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nonrecursive
it seems like, within "top level" comments with the same number of points, the
comments switch between sorting ascending and descending by... a staggering of
the time posted.

having more points puts you at the top of the comment list.

So, for example, this comment will have one point when i first post it. Since
it's the latest comment, it will at first display topmost. When the next
person posts a comment, my comment will display last and his will display
first. Then when I refresh mine will display first and his last.

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randallsquared
I'd assumed it was an artifact of the storage mechanism that pg didn't
consider problematic enough to fix. PostgreSQL, for example, has no order
guarantees unless you explicitly call for them, but seems to order by last
update to the row.

Not that I'm suggesting that a SQL database backs news.yc; pg seems to have a
preference for filesystems over databases.

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volida
I noticed that too. Especially if you update 2-3 times your
comment...Sometimes it goes on top, then lower...

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notabel
I've always taken this to be a feature, to promote development of comment
threads beyond just the first few.

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volida
i agree, that was my thought too

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herdrick
They do that to remove the natural voting bias that favors comments nearer to
the top of the page.

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joshwa
maybe after he's finished sending out the emails, we'll get ajax upvoting and
commenting so it'll be easier to find your place again...

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jey
Nah, just right click the upvote link and click "Open Link in New Tab". (in
firefox anyway)

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rms
I use control click myself...

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imp
I use the middle mouse button.

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rms
I would but I'm on a laptop without any of those fancy third buttons.

