[Meta] proposal — a flair for ranking posts
Putting this to the board: proposal — a flair for ranking posts.
Submissions older than a year are archived: readable, linkable, and closed to new comments. That keeps a three-year-old thread from being reopened with a reply nobody will see in context.
Vendor source pages carry an outbound link to the supplier’s own storefront, marked nofollow and sponsored, disclosed on the page and again on the funding page. Nothing is received for it.
The evidence standard on the vendor boards requires a document, a date or a named service behind any claim about a supplier. It is what makes those threads worth reading years later.
Screenshot none of this. Read the whole thread, including the parts where I am told I am wrong.
best — the order this archive was captured in
Moderation of individual cases happens in modmail rather than in threads, because a public discussion of one person’s removal is worse for that person than a private one.
the ranking formula is published, go and read it
Small fix — archiving happens at a year, not at six months. It is in the published policy.
removals get explained publicly where the rule allows it
the ranking formula is published, go and read it
This is the principle the whole site is built on. Publish it or do not enforce it.
A rule-change proposal needs replacement wording because that is what can be evaluated. Without it there is nothing to compare against the current text.
How a rule actually changes here, since people assume it is arbitrary.
Somebody posts a proposal with replacement wording — not a complaint, actual text. It gets argued about, usually for a week or two. If it survives, it goes in with whatever amendments came out of the argument, and the change is announced with the reasoning attached.
The reason wording is required is that it is the only thing that can be evaluated. "The vendor evidence rules are too strict" cannot be adopted, rejected or amended. A proposed sentence can. Several rules on this site started as a comment in a thread like this one, which is the strongest argument for the process.
This. Modmail first is not bureaucracy; it stops individual cases turning into a public pile-on.
Had a post removed, went to modmail, got a specific explanation and disagreed with it politely. It stayed removed and I understood why.
rule-change proposals need a concrete wording, not a complaint
Feed position is a function of early votes and time. That structurally favours agreeable early answers over correct late ones, which is why sorting by controversial occasionally is worth the effort.
The ranking functions are published: the hot ordering combines score magnitude with age, and the controversial ordering weights total volume by the balance between up and down votes. Both are reproducible from the numbers on each submission.
Have you read the published formula, genuinely asking?
Right, and the storefront links on source pages are marked and disclosed, which is the honest way to do it.
nobody here is paid, including the moderators
What would the new rule do to the vendor evidence standard?
Have you taken this to modmail first?
Checked the sponsor disclosure because I assumed it would be vague. It was extremely specific and slightly boring.
Disagree with loosening that. The evidence rule is why a supplier report here means something.
- 1The ranking functions are published: the hot ordering combines score…7 comments in this branch · started by u/hub_ops