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The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

toddwschneider.com

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Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#131

Post by Havoc »

raldi wrote: post #130
Havoc wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats an awful lot of funny looking graphs to blame on a "normalization algo". e.g. >r/funny posts simply never appear on the bottom half of page one or most of page two Note the "never" part....not just rarely...never. Well within this 1.2 million point dataset anyway.

It's likely that, at any given time, the top 2-3 links of /r/funny are highly-ranked enough to make the front page -- except the algorithm won't let more than one from that subreddit through at a time. So the alpha-funny link makes it, and the beta-funny link has to sit on page 3, suppressed, unable to take its rightful spot... until suddenly alpha-funny is too old, and is kicked off the front page, at which point be…

I see. That does make sense. Bit of a curious view on "normalization" but I can see how that would result in the strange graphs.

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#132

Post by raldi »

Havoc wrote: post #131
raldi wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's likely that, at any given time, the top 2-3 links of /r/funny are highly-ranked enough to make the front page -- except the algorithm won't let more than one from that subreddit through at a time. So the alpha-funny link makes it, and the beta-funny link has to sit on page 3, suppressed, unable to take its rightful spot... until suddenly alpha-funny is too old, and is kicked off the front page, at which point be…

I see. That does make sense. Bit of a curious view on "normalization" but I can see how that would result in the strange graphs.

It's kinda like the British royal family: Prince Charles is just one heartbeat away from the throne, but as long as the queen is healthy, she's the one who gets to be on all the money.

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#133

Post by nikolak »

ketralnis wrote: post #64
selmnoo wrote: post #4

One thing I'm interested in knowing is whether Reddit manipulates the votes on its own submissions. See, for example, r/blog: http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/new/ Every submission made there went to the frontpage. What are the chances? I mean, it's hard to believe that mainstream Redditors at this point are so interested in Reddit news that they keep sending every Reddit announcement to the top. What's more likely, to m…

I've been out of the loop for a few years, but no the votes aren't manipulated. But the normalisation algorithm https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/norma... does prefer to get one at least of each subreddit. This means that if /r/blog has a post it will probably be placed on the front page immediately. That action gets it a lot of votes just because it's very visible.

>I've been out of the loop for a few years, but no the votes aren't manipulated.

Could you then explain the, pretty much on the dot, massive score changes every 2 hours? That was even more noticeable when the downvotes were shown - although they were 'fake' the final score, which is according to the FAQ correct, was changed.

I noticed this when I created a simple graphing script, you can see example graph of what I'm talking about here: https://github.com/Nikola-K/reddit-thread-graph#example

You can see that on any popular thread until the score is "normalized" around 3k points.

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#134

Post by nichochar »

jedberg wrote: post #100

This post is interesting, but he should have just read the code: https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/norma... This is an effect of the normalization algorithm, which biases towards trying to have a post from as may different subreddits as possible on the front page. Edit: At least we're consistent! Ketralnis said the same thing about an hour ago. :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8568021

I don't think reading the code replaces the post. A good example is that even when you implement an algorithm you monitor it, measure the results and tweak it.

Code is the theory (bottom to top) and his research (which is great) is a top to bottom analysis

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#135

Post by jedberg »

nichochar wrote: post #134
jedberg wrote: post #100

This post is interesting, but he should have just read the code: https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/norma... This is an effect of the normalization algorithm, which biases towards trying to have a post from as may different subreddits as possible on the front page. Edit: At least we're consistent! Ketralnis said the same thing about an hour ago. :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8568021

I don't think reading the code replaces the post. A good example is that even when you implement an algorithm you monitor it, measure the results and tweak it. Code is the theory (bottom to top) and his research (which is great) is a top to bottom analysis

I wasn't discounting his research (apologies if it sounded that way). I was simply pointing out that at the end he made it sound like this behavior was unexplained, when in fact that code explains it quite well.

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#136

Post by keypusher »

mrfusion wrote: post #10
lbotos wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit has a default frontpage for people who don't have accounts. I lurked for years and was just fine without actually creating an account. :)

Isn't the default page mostly cat pictures and jokes? I tried viewing it logged out one time and I couldn't figure out who would like that?

They changed the default subreddits a while back, and also have done work to make sure no particular theme (such as funny pictures) outweighs the others.

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#139

Post by adamnemecek »

jedberg wrote: post #100

This post is interesting, but he should have just read the code: https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/norma... This is an effect of the normalization algorithm, which biases towards trying to have a post from as may different subreddits as possible on the front page. Edit: At least we're consistent! Ketralnis said the same thing about an hour ago. :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8568021

out of curiosity, what does the 'r2' stand for? does the two indicate that it's a rewrite of the original lisp code, as in r(eddit)2?

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#140

Post by ketralnis »

nikolak wrote: post #133
ketralnis wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been out of the loop for a few years, but no the votes aren't manipulated. But the normalisation algorithm https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/norma... does prefer to get one at least of each subreddit. This means that if /r/blog has a post it will probably be placed on the front page immediately. That action gets it a lot of votes just because it's very visible.

>I've been out of the loop for a few years, but no the votes aren't manipulated. Could you then explain the, pretty much on the dot, massive score changes every 2 hours? That was even more noticeable when the downvotes were shown - although they were 'fake' the final score, which is according to the FAQ correct, was changed. I noticed this when I created a simple graphing script, you can see example graph of what I'm…

If accurate, I'd guess that it's the cache lifetime for which of the default subreddits to show on the front page
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