[Feature Request] Reddit 'best' comment sorting - a confidence based sorting algorithm
[Feature Request] Reddit 'best' comment sorting - a confidence based sorting algorithm
Requirements Is this a feature request? For questions or discussions use https://lemmy.ml/c/lemmy_support Did you check to see if this issue already exists? Is this only a feature request? Do not p...
![Add a "confidence" comment sort option · Issue #3381 · LemmyNet/lemmy](https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/xekg3NQvZ5.png?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
This is a feature request to implement reddit's 'best' sorting algorithm for comments.
Quoting the github issue creator academician:
Here is Reddit's original announcement post for the feature, written by Randall Munroe from XKCD, and here is an article about how the ranking algorithm works under the hood. Essentially, it uses a Wilson score interval based on the ratio of upvotes to downvotes.
TL;DR:
Top sorting has the problem that early comments usually stay on top because people are more likely to read the top comment and upvote it as opposed to reading new comments at the bottom.
Hot takes into account time and is very biased towards newer comments. I frequently see a much higher voted comment (with no downvotes) below a comment that was just posted a little later (maybe this can be tweaked a little though).
Best Doesn't take time into account at all. Instead we are trying to estimate how well received a comment might be in the future (its ratio of upvotes and downvotes), given the total number of upvotes and downvotes right now. This both allows the comments to be sorted by how much people upvoted (and downvoted) them but also allows new popular comments to rise quickly.
I hope this can be implemented soon. The code for the algorithm is already available in Rust or SQL, so it shouldn't be too much work.