Is the DN algorithm placing too much value on time?
6 years ago from Oskar Levinson, UX Designer
Over the last year or so we've seen more and more stories soar to the top of the Designer News front page even though the content is of low quality. These stories have only 3-4 upvotes and/or 2-3 comments, all from voting rings (usually you can track it back to accounts that all have the same employer, or who are otherwise affiliated).
At the same time you can have stories with 20+ upvotes and/or comment numbers in the 20s-100s sitting at the lower part of the page. These stories are often ±24h old.
This led me to think that perhaps the algorithm ranking the stories is too heavily geared towards new posts. I understand that a news site needs fresh content surfacing, but in my opinion quality stories or stories with a long discussion (i.e. tons of comments) are far more interesting than another meaningless blogpost designed only to drive traffic to a certain website. 24 hours is not a very long time for something to slip down and go unnoticed by a large part of the DN readers. Therefor upvotes and comments should provide a higher value to the algorithm than how new a story is imo.
What are your thoughts on this?
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