“Posts most popular in 2012 and written in 2012” gives an advantage to posts written earlier in the year. Solutions to this could include:
rank posts by (2012 views / age), though that is noisy at the recent end
rank posts by the number of views they had when one year old
rank posts by the “Best” comment sorting algorithm; wait, that doesn’t work, there is no analogue of a downvote, so make this “use a more refined estimation algorithm”
“Posts most popular in 2012 and written in 2012” gives an advantage to posts written earlier in the year. Solutions to this could include:
rank posts by (2012 views / age), though that is noisy at the recent end
rank posts by the number of views they had when one year old
rank posts by the “Best” comment sorting algorithm; wait, that doesn’t work, there is no analogue of a downvote, so make this “use a more refined estimation algorithm”