Hacker News Front Page Ranking Algorithm (2008)

https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/blob/official/news.arc#L270

17 10 6 years ago

anthonyu• 6 years ago

This should have (2009) appended to the title. I imagine that the code for this site has changed a great deal in the last eleven years.

jsf012• 6 years ago

Is this the actual HN ranking code? It looks like a demo of a lisp.

krapp2• 6 years ago

Hacker News literally is (or began as) pg's demo of Arc Lisp.

But Anarki no longer resembles what's running on HN currently.

jsf012• 6 years ago

Never knew! Thank you. Do you know if the current algorithm is published anywhere or do they keep that under wraps to prevent it from being gamed?

detaro• 6 years ago

HN runs an evolved version of said "demo of a lisp". So it's probably not the actual code running anymore, but it is a predecessor.

minimaxir• 6 years ago

dang has mentioned several times the algorithm has evolved over the years.

kens• 6 years ago

That's from 2009 and also excludes a lot of the "secret sauce". I reverse-engineered the algorithm in 2013 [1], but things have changed a lot since then.

[1] http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...

zxcvbn4038• 6 years ago

I’ve tried to verify the algorithm in the past but the api doesn’t expose enough information to do so. You would need to be able to see points on the comments, where currently you can only see the points on the comments you made. If I remember correctly the reputation of the voters at the time they voted is also a factor. I completely understand why this isn’t available but if your just really curious how the greatest site around works you reach a dead end there.

It can be really facisnating to see the magic numbers and transformations people come up with.

crazypython• 6 years ago

The actual algorithm should probably stay secret to prevent manipulation of Hacker News. But, details would be useful to others building similar social networks around other principles.

Hacker News Front Page Ranking Algorithm (2008)

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