How does news.yc order comments? They seem to randomly reorder themselves between reloads.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11340

by jey • 19 years ago

5 15 19 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

volida2• 19 years ago

I noticed that too. Especially if you update 2-3 times your comment...Sometimes it goes on top, then lower...

notabel• 19 years ago

I've always taken this to be a feature, to promote development of comment threads beyond just the first few.

volida2• 19 years ago

i agree, that was my thought too

joshwa2• 19 years ago

maybe after he's finished sending out the emails, we'll get ajax upvoting and commenting so it'll be easier to find your place again...

jey• 19 years ago

Nah, just right click the upvote link and click "Open Link in New Tab". (in firefox anyway)

joshwa2• 19 years ago

Thanks, that'll do for now. (why didn't I think of that?)

rms2• 19 years ago

I use control click myself...

nonrecursive• 19 years ago

it seems like, within "top level" comments with the same number of points, the comments switch between sorting ascending and descending by... a staggering of the time posted.

having more points puts you at the top of the comment list.

So, for example, this comment will have one point when i first post it. Since it's the latest comment, it will at first display topmost. When the next person posts a comment, my comment will display last and his will display first. Then when I refresh mine will display first and his last.

brlewis• 19 years ago

My unscientific impression is that it depends on recency, score, and author's karma, for each comment in the thread.

herdrick• 19 years ago

They do that to remove the natural voting bias that favors comments nearer to the top of the page.

randallsquared• 19 years ago

I'd assumed it was an artifact of the storage mechanism that pg didn't consider problematic enough to fix. PostgreSQL, for example, has no order guarantees unless you explicitly call for them, but seems to order by last update to the row.

Not that I'm suggesting that a SQL database backs news.yc; pg seems to have a preference for filesystems over databases.

vlad• 19 years ago

Guys... it's very simple! For every level in the hierarchy, it ranks the posts in order of points, and randomizes the order for those that have the same points.

timg• 19 years ago

Well that's an interesting approach.

How does news.yc order comments? They seem to randomly reorder themselves between reloads.

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