Some arbitrarily constructed statistics are more useless than others.
More substantially, the metric that is being proposed gives one an idea of proportionally what people think of something. A post that say has +10 karma and 200 comments is a different situation from a +50 post with 10 comments. But I’m not completely sure what the distinction would mean without more knowledge of the social structure and voting patterns of the typical LWians.
I may not have been clear about what I meant. I was thinking of an additional number which doesn’t include the karma for the post. It’s strictly about the comments.
If a discussion has 100 comments with an average of 4 points each (I think this would be on the very high side), the discussion is likely to be worth reading, even if the post only has 10 points itself. If a post has 50 points, but the discussion only has an average of .75 points per comment (I think this would be on the very low side), then the post might be more worth reading, but the comments might be worth skipping unless you have hopes of a good sub-thread.
Some arbitrarily constructed statistics are more useless than others.
More substantially, the metric that is being proposed gives one an idea of proportionally what people think of something. A post that say has +10 karma and 200 comments is a different situation from a +50 post with 10 comments. But I’m not completely sure what the distinction would mean without more knowledge of the social structure and voting patterns of the typical LWians.
I may not have been clear about what I meant. I was thinking of an additional number which doesn’t include the karma for the post. It’s strictly about the comments.
If a discussion has 100 comments with an average of 4 points each (I think this would be on the very high side), the discussion is likely to be worth reading, even if the post only has 10 points itself. If a post has 50 points, but the discussion only has an average of .75 points per comment (I think this would be on the very low side), then the post might be more worth reading, but the comments might be worth skipping unless you have hopes of a good sub-thread.