Could we please make a trial run of modified "hotness formula" for Programmers questions?
- Modification details are described in this MSO post as follows:
As far as I can tell, substantial part of
Qanswers
in current formula is fake.(log(Qviews)*4) + ((Qanswers * Qscore)/5) + sum(Ascores)
About 1/3 of the answers studied here (83 of total 254) have score less than 1/100 of top voted post in respective question.
Given that questions checked were ones with tens thousands views, insultingly low score indicates that assuming these answers to be popular wouldn't even be in the ballpark. Still, the formula pumps these into
Qanswers
value, as if it is something everyone would be happy to read (hint: it isn't).Consider tuning the formula to make it deviate less from voting results. Ignore answers with non-positive score. Or better yet, ignore answers scored less than some reasonable fraction (eg 1/10) of the top one.
Given that current formula appears to give an unjustified value to crappy answers in highly upvoted questions (Qscore/5
, no matter how much is answer downvoted), I would like to perform test run to find out if suggested change would make an impact to issues outlined in Programmers meta posts:
Answers quality in hot questions
Note: results of the trial run to be analyzed using study analogous to one performed in Answers quality in hot questions. Current evaluation shows about 101-118 low quality of 218 answers sampled.
Upon completion of trial run, similar evaluation is to be done in order to estimate whether there was a substantial impact, positive or negative.
Complementary information to this request is provided in comments below, marked with "for the record..."
Note I expect modified formula to be competitive to current one at "moderately hot" questions, following the reasoning outlined here:
For questions that are not too hot (likely 2-3 clicks away from top of the list) it's natural to see things working exactly as intended. Answers and comments quality is mostly maintained by site / tag regulars (business as usual), collider brings moderate amount of interested newcomers from other sites with their views, votes and fresh perspective, everything is nice and cool...
Recent hot question about automated testing gives an example of why I would want to try a modified formula. In 17 hours, question collected 17 answers, merely 5-7 of which provide useful original content.
Overheat of fake hotness impacted question like a Black Saturday fire.
After the fire settled, what is left for future visitors of the question looks like a wasteland of low quality garbage (note that due to high views, it will score high in web searches).
In the light of above, community wiki status stamped on the question looks especially despicable. It kind of suggests that after damage has done, community members are invited to go over the crap brought in by braindead formula, carefully analyze it and try to tame the pain by downvotes. As if they don't have anything better to do!
Update
Related feature request has been posted at MSO:
Please stop counting proven low score answers in hotness formula. Please roll the dice fairly, let user voting and time decay contribute to hotness score as intended. Please promote to collider audience less brain-damaging content to learn from.
-5
, it will still be added toQanswers
and multiplied byQscore
- in highly popular questions this means almost any non-deleted answer will only add to "hotness", no matter how crappy it isLooking for an authoritative reference to address related feature request: **[Trial run of modified "hotness formula" for Programmers questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5482/31260)**