Am I the only one who is confused why this comment (currently at −3) has drifted to the top when sorted with the new “Best” algorithm? That seems to be either a mistake or a bad algorithm.
Not necessarily a bad algorithm. This is possible if it uses your karma as a factor, which is in general not a bad idea (in this case countered by the collapsing negative scores thing)
I don’t understand what you mean, specifically about “my karma” as a factor. Can you give an example? Do you mean whether or not I personally upvoted it? Or my personal karma score? I can’t see how either would be particularly relevant. Regardless, if the former is what you meant, I have not voted on the original comment.
He didn’t mean your karma specifically, but Arbitrary Hypothetical Second-Person Comment-Poster X’s karma.
For example, suppose E.Y. were to post, for whatever reason (cat jumping on keyboard?), a really pointless, flawed comment that everyone actually downvoted. If the algorithm takes into account the poster’s total Karma in some proportional manner not implementing any diminutive return strategy, then E.Y.’s downvoted comment would still be at the top unless it received an amount of downvotes that seems almost impossible to obtain using only the current active LW readership.
For example, suppose E.Y. were to post, for whatever reason (cat jumping on keyboard?), a really pointless, flawed comment that everyone actually downvoted...
Irrelevant in practice, since in that scenario the comment would be massively upvoted.
I see negative-scored comments in http://lesswrong.com/topcomments/?t=day pretty often. Likewise, sometimes sorting comments by “Old” mis-sorts some of them (which is somewhat confusing when reading comments to old posts imported from Overcoming Bias).
Am I the only one who is confused why this comment (currently at −3) has drifted to the top when sorted with the new “Best” algorithm? That seems to be either a mistake or a bad algorithm.
Not necessarily a bad algorithm. This is possible if it uses your karma as a factor, which is in general not a bad idea (in this case countered by the collapsing negative scores thing)
I don’t understand what you mean, specifically about “my karma” as a factor. Can you give an example? Do you mean whether or not I personally upvoted it? Or my personal karma score? I can’t see how either would be particularly relevant. Regardless, if the former is what you meant, I have not voted on the original comment.
He didn’t mean your karma specifically, but Arbitrary Hypothetical Second-Person Comment-Poster X’s karma.
For example, suppose E.Y. were to post, for whatever reason (cat jumping on keyboard?), a really pointless, flawed comment that everyone actually downvoted. If the algorithm takes into account the poster’s total Karma in some proportional manner not implementing any diminutive return strategy, then E.Y.’s downvoted comment would still be at the top unless it received an amount of downvotes that seems almost impossible to obtain using only the current active LW readership.
Ah. That makes sense. I don’t know why that didn’t occur to me. Regardless, I don’t think it does, based on explanations here and here.
This happened once (F12 was mapped to that set of keystrokes at the time).
BTW, who was it who had a script to sort all the comments by a user by karma? wedrifid?
Wei Dai’s thing will do that—click “points” at the top after loading the whole page.
Yes, it was that one I was thinking about. Thanks.
Haha! Thanks, great example.
I’d say that using it in a proportional manner not implementing any diminutive return strategy would be a mistake and a bad algorithm.
Irrelevant in practice, since in that scenario the comment would be massively upvoted.
Yudkowsky’s been downvoted before; the most notable time in recent memory was probably removing the link to the NY Observer article.
I think I misread that comment as Eliezer posting a picture or video of a cat jumping on the keyboard.
Relevant.
Relevant
I meant lukeprog’s karma, i.e. the poster of a comment influences how good the comment is.
DaFranker clarified this. Thanks.
I see negative-scored comments in http://lesswrong.com/topcomments/?t=day pretty often. Likewise, sometimes sorting comments by “Old” mis-sorts some of them (which is somewhat confusing when reading comments to old posts imported from Overcoming Bias).