
Hacker News Front Page Ranking Algorithm (2008) - kirillzubovsky
https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/blob/official/news.arc#L270
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kens
That's from 2009 and also excludes a lot of the "secret sauce". I reverse-
engineered the algorithm in 2013 [1], but things have changed a lot since
then.

[1] [http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-
really...](http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really-
works.html)

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anthonyu
This should have (2009) appended to the title. I imagine that the code for
this site has changed a great deal in the last eleven years.

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zxcvbn4038
I’ve tried to verify the algorithm in the past but the api doesn’t expose
enough information to do so. You would need to be able to see points on the
comments, where currently you can only see the points on the comments you
made. If I remember correctly the reputation of the voters at the time they
voted is also a factor. I completely understand why this isn’t available but
if your just really curious how the greatest site around works you reach a
dead end there.

It can be really facisnating to see the magic numbers and transformations
people come up with.

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crazypython
The actual algorithm should probably stay secret to prevent manipulation of
Hacker News. But, details would be useful to others building similar social
networks around other principles.

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jsf01
Is this the actual HN ranking code? It looks like a demo of a lisp.

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krapp
Hacker News literally is (or began as) pg's demo of Arc Lisp.

But Anarki no longer resembles what's running on HN currently.

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jsf01
Never knew! Thank you. Do you know if the current algorithm is published
anywhere or do they keep that under wraps to prevent it from being gamed?

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krapp
I think dang has mentioned they might consider publishing some of the changes
they've made over the years but that it would be difficult to untangle the YC
business logic from everything else, and they wouldn't have the time to
maintain it.

But anything to do with voting, spam detection, ranking etc. though, they
definitely keep secret.

