Sorting and Rating Comments

OK!  So, 2:23 AM and we got the first version of our sorting algorithm.  I’ve spent a long time thinking about bias and how we want our system to behave…  Came to the following conclusions:

• Anonymity: Information should be evaluated on the merit of information and information only.  Hence the system is anonymous.  This should prevent people who like posting garbage simply to get to the top from doing so.
• Bias: bias is not when a system present one-sided information.  Bias is when you can’t get any other information if youa re looking for it.  I don’t care whether people support Obama or McCain – both have strong points to them and there are reasons to vote both.  Recently I had a Vote “Everything” with content “www.barakobama.com”.  Now, come on, you could at least put it into the link section.  So this is not a very informative post, so it should end up lower on the queue.
• Volatility: I want to make sure that the algorithm is difficult to figure out so that gaming of the system is minimized.  Thus I introduced some randomness.  This will also allow information that is not initially recognized to get on the radar.

Right now the algorithm is fairly simple.  However, I’ll be fine-tuning it to try to make sure that it favors good, well-sourced, reliable information.  I can already see some of the problems that will arise, but it will be interesting to jump off that bridge when we get there.

Please post your votes and vote.  I am very curious how this will turn out…  if it turns out…