Comments for Rheta’s World

Comment on PostRank goes bump by Ilya Grigorik

Ilya Grigorik — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:58:10 +0000

Rheta, good points. We’ll update the FAQ as you’ve suggested. On flukes and top 10%, PostRank does take these cases into account - I’ll try to elaborate on that as well in our FAQ. Thanks a lot for all the suggestions!

Comment on PostRank goes bump by Rheta Shan

Rheta Shan — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:55:01 +0000

Ilya : maybe you should post a slightly more illuminating explanation straight on the FAQ. What there is in it now is so terse as to be useless. A sentence or two about how reaction is computed, and another one or two about how reaction history makes for the relevance factor in the vein of what you so nicely explained in these comments would be really helpful for those who, like me, wonder what is going on — you can always link to a more detailed explanation after that, but I think not too many people will want to read something as technically sounding as a « whitepaper ».

On another tack, and judging from my own rankings, you might consider dampening the impact of flukes on the relevance part of your computation — filtering out the top and bottom 10 %, say, before computing the historical average of the blog reactions. Take my « Est-ce une révolution », for instance, whose huge exposure was both entirely unmerited and only tangentially related to my usual blogging : this is a classic fluke, and the way PostRank downrates all my subsequent postings in the light of that exposure is more skewed than helpful. I could imagine this holds true of other cases than mine, too.

Eidur : maybe I should trademark SarcasmRank and offer a ranking engine ?

Void : I’m so glad to hear from you, especially to hear you’re doing fine. Whatever you miss, I know I miss you.

Comment on [RESOLVED] Codename Pitchfork by Rheta Shan

Rheta Shan — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:38:14 +0000

Ciaran, Void, thanks for your comments, and I agree on both your points. If this is not a conspiracy to get residents at each others throat (which I consider unlikely mostly for the simple reason that that kind of operation would take far more intelligence and long term planning ability than the Lab ever displayed), it is at the least a very poorly implemented idea, and the reactions by many show that the effect on the social matrix will be overwhelmingly negative.

Comment on [RESOLVED] Codename Pitchfork by Void Singer

Void Singer — Wed, 14 May 2008 23:04:28 +0000

hehe, I’m missing out on so much… 4 pts for each flexi prim? lmao, well that certainly is scary considering some of the hair out there… and the lead up…. more SLInsanity to be sure, but freakish as well. I do find it interesting that not only is relative GPU performance ignored, but apparently so are user settings which reduce or eliminate specific problem areas (bump, shiny, glow, fexi mesh, etc)… someone didn’t think this all the through for certain

Comment on PostRank goes bump by Void Singer

Void Singer — Wed, 14 May 2008 22:50:18 +0000

Ah the magic of what a machine finds relevant as opposed to a computer. reminds me of an article (sorry no reference link) about automated scanning of various websites to PREDICT community/national/global trends in attitudes on various topics… I suppose it’s a matter of finding that you felt it neccessary to post a humorous warning that it picked up on…. a post about subjective feeling, rather than the content… or maybe it’s just the image link PS I’m still stuck for the moment, but doing fine, hope all is well with you

Comment on PostRank goes bump by Eidur

Eidur — Wed, 14 May 2008 13:29:42 +0000

/me runs to subscribe to SarcasmRank™ !!!

Comment on PostRank goes bump by Ilya Grigorik

Ilya Grigorik — Wed, 14 May 2008 03:45:13 +0000

Rheta, yep, we collect a lot of meta data about the content, it’s structure, etc., but the primary weight of the PostRank is given to the ‘reaction’ component as you’ve described.

We’re working supporting material - white paper and microsite - which will go into much more detail on how we do the ranking, just as you’ve suggested.

Comment on PostRank goes bump by Rheta Shan

Rheta Shan — Tue, 13 May 2008 18:47:42 +0000

Ilya, thank you for actually commenting my little jibe. Do I understand you right that « relevance » means « reaction in light of past history of the blog » ? Meaning posts that gather an uncommonly high or low number of reactions for the blog’s average get ranked up or down ? So you didn’t actually magically infer how typo prone I am ? Oooooohhh…

On a more serious note, this might go a long way towards explaining some oddities in the ranking, and I think you should indeed document this as clearly as possible, because it runs a bit counter to what one would expect (viz. my own reaction).

Comment on PostRank goes bump by Ilya Grigorik

Ilya Grigorik — Tue, 13 May 2008 18:26:34 +0000

Rheta, you’ve raised some very good points. A few comments on how we do the ranking:

As you’ve pointed out, ‘reaction’ is our primary source of analysis - we collect meta data such as comments, bookmarks, etc., and then based on these metrics single out stories that have received the most attention. Now, as you can imagine, attention can be good and bad. It may be the case that the article has generated a great discussion, or it could be ‘flame bait’. We do not do any magic to distinguish between these cases, and simply suggest to the reader: “hey, this is what people are paying attention to”. After all, a big debate is information in itself, even if negative.

To address the relevance point: we don’t go any further than measure the rank of the story with respect to the past history of the feed / web-site. While our algorithm takes in a whole set of parameters, we do try to be as transparent as we can be about it. In fact, we’re working on a white paper to explain our logic, and ranking methodology.

Hope this answers some of your questions. Let me know if anything else comes up!

Ilya

Comment on PostRank goes bump by Rheta Shan

Rheta Shan — Tue, 13 May 2008 14:57:42 +0000

That comment rates a clean 10.0 at SarcasmRank™.