Timeline for Fastest Gun in the West Problem
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
39 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 11 at 3:26 | history | rollback | Makyen | Rollback to Revision 16 | |
| May 11 at 2:08 | history | edited | WGroleau | CC BY-SA 4.0 | deleted 10 characters in body |
| Oct 18, 2021 at 8:37 | history | edited | This_is_NOT_a_forum | CC BY-SA 4.0 | (While we are at it.) [<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xkcd>]. |
| Oct 17, 2021 at 9:30 | comment | added | This_is_NOT_a_forum | ("SLL" should probably have been SSL (for HTTPS).) | |
| Oct 17, 2021 at 8:58 | history | edited | wovano | CC BY-SA 4.0 | redditblog link is now also dead; so using wayback machine link again |
| Apr 11, 2021 at 13:28 | history | edited | bad_coder | CC BY-SA 4.0 | Added SLL. |
| Apr 11, 2021 at 11:16 | history | edited | user3840170 | CC BY-SA 4.0 | added 363 characters in body |
| Dec 12, 2019 at 4:40 | comment | added | Ben Carp | This only takes into account positive and negative votes. Doesn't take into account number of views | |
| Mar 30, 2018 at 3:42 | history | edited | ashleedawg | CC BY-SA 3.0 | adjusted relative timeframe for increased ambiguity |
| Dec 20, 2017 at 12:18 | history | edited | Jeevan Takhar | CC BY-SA 3.0 | updated relative timeframe |
| Apr 28, 2017 at 21:29 | history | edited | Stevoisiak | CC BY-SA 3.0 | Replace 'WayBackWhen' archive with direct link to Reddit Blog |
| Mar 14, 2017 at 17:33 | comment | added | Douglas Daseeco | This algorithm suffers from the same problem as the current one. It is not temporally aware. The statistical advantage given to the fastest gun is related to this lack of consideration of the chronology of answers in the reputation incentives. The Designers try to compensate by featuring new answers. But the advantage of speed still exists. The design goal should be chronological independence. I proposed one possible mechanism here: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/291364/… | |
| Aug 22, 2016 at 22:50 | history | edited | icc97 | CC BY-SA 3.0 | Randall's comment doesn't exist anymore, found it in the way back machine |
| Jun 27, 2016 at 8:05 | comment | added | v.oddou | @Ilmari Karonen I agree, ever since I read Evan Miller article I thought it was a weird idea to use the lower bound and not the midpoint. | |
| Sep 3, 2015 at 18:33 | comment | added | Mast | Of course, this answer is late, so it will never get upvoted :) Current score: 497. Did you just disprove OP's point? | |
| Aug 4, 2015 at 22:56 | history | edited | BlueRaja | CC BY-SA 3.0 | deleted 1 character in body |
| Aug 4, 2015 at 22:45 | history | edited | BlueRaja | CC BY-SA 3.0 | deleted 2 characters in body |
| Aug 4, 2015 at 22:39 | history | edited | BlueRaja | CC BY-SA 3.0 | added 528 characters in body |
| Jun 15, 2015 at 11:04 | comment | added | KajMagnus | I have cast thousands of upvotes, but not a single downvote. I've thought about it a few times but usually the answer had been downvoted already so I didn't feel good about downvoting it even more. What you could do instead of comparing up and down votes, is taking into account how many people have upvoted an answer, in comparison to how many people have read it. I wrote a blog post about that, debiki.com/-9qb49/… | |
| Jun 3, 2015 at 14:40 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| Jun 3, 2015 at 15:04 | |||||
| May 19, 2015 at 0:15 | comment | added | John | Great answer! Based on this and other discussion, I have created a specific feature request here: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/294637/… | |
| Mar 12, 2015 at 19:53 | comment | added | Ilmari Karonen | A problem with this formula is that, for posts with no upvotes, it always returns (or should return, if there were no round-off errors) a zero score regardless of the number of downvotes. (In fact, numerical errors may cause downvotes to slightly increase the score.) A better choice could be to use the midpoint of the 95% Wilson score interval instead of the lower bound, which also leads to a simpler formula: score = (upVotes + z*z/2) / (totalVotes + z*z). As a bonus, for high vote counts, this actually favors uncontroversial posts a bit more than using the lower bound would. | |
| Oct 27, 2014 at 20:06 | history | edited | BlueRaja | CC BY-SA 3.0 | added 51 characters in body |
| Oct 2, 2014 at 15:33 | comment | added | CashCow | upvoted even if your maths is poor. 1927 was 84 years ago at the time you posted (presumably 2011). Now 87.. | |
| Jul 25, 2014 at 15:27 | comment | added | Yankes | I think that "negative" votes should be number of view of that answer. In long run every answer will have similar number of views. This will create 3rd option for voting: Great answer +1, ok answer 0, Wrong answer -1. Down vote should have bigger weight, and numbers of views less weight. | |
| Mar 22, 2013 at 10:04 | comment | added | James Donnelly | This would be a perfect solution, but unfortunately I feel people are put off downvoting due to the negative reputation it gives - especially new users with low reputation. | |
| Mar 11, 2013 at 10:06 | comment | added | Jirka Hanika | +1, even though I strongly disagree regarding up/downvote weights (I like them as they are). Note that the confidence score statistical method is completely independent of the process that generated the data (actual voting). | |
| Mar 11, 2013 at 8:25 | history | edited | Eric | CC BY-SA 3.0 | SYntax highlighting |
| Feb 7, 2012 at 7:06 | comment | added | naught101 | Yes, but the facts that a) you require more reputation points to downvote, and b) you lose reputation points for downvoting (and gain them for upvoting), means that down votes are much less likely, and are therefore more meaningful than upvotes (people probably put more consideration into their down votes than their upvotes - I know I do). The above equation doesn't take this into account at all, although it could, if you weighted the downvotes higher than the upvotes (eg. by total votes on all sites/down votes) | |
| Feb 6, 2012 at 17:03 | comment | added | BlueRaja | @naught101: This is completely unrelated to a user's reputation, it's only for sorting answers on a page. | |
| Feb 6, 2012 at 6:58 | comment | added | naught101 | Statistics FTW! However, this would require that the cost of downvoting is more or less the same as the cost of upvoting. Currently you get points for upvoting, and lose points for downvoting. That will seriously screw up the statistics (although there might be a way to adjust for it). | |
| Dec 10, 2011 at 0:40 | comment | added | sarnold | @BlueRaja: Ha! Good point. :) | |
| Dec 10, 2011 at 0:38 | comment | added | BlueRaja | @sarnold: In that case, the new answer will be conveniently at top for us to flag (or upvote). It will only be there a few minutes though, so it will likely be only the people who spend all day hitting F5 on the "active questions" page who see it at top, not the people who actually need to find an answer to that question. | |
| Dec 10, 2011 at 0:28 | comment | added | sarnold | @BlueRaja: mostly right, but I've seen questions with accepted answers still getting answers a year later, often very poor answers from new users who don't yet know The Ways Of Our People. | |
| Dec 10, 2011 at 0:19 | comment | added | BlueRaja | "newer answers should be given preferential treatment" - I should explain. When people are racing to answer a brand new question, the answers posted a few minutes later tend to be slightly longer but higher quality; but, by then the early answers have gained too much first-five-minutes-momentum. If you add a factor of say, someConstant/secondsSinceAnswerWasPosted to the above rating, this would give the later answers a precious minute or two at top to gather some votes of their own. And usually when someone an older question it's because none of the existing answers were satisfactory. | |
| Dec 10, 2011 at 0:11 | history | edited | BlueRaja | CC BY-SA 3.0 | Adding code sample |
| Aug 2, 2011 at 22:36 | comment | added | Gleno | +1 infinity, although the formula would have to be modified to take into account the pinned "correct answer" somehow. Even Randal of XKCD fame is behind on this one! | |
| May 13, 2010 at 19:34 | history | edited | BlueRaja | CC BY-SA 2.5 | edited body; deleted 6 characters in body |
| May 13, 2010 at 18:41 | history | answered | BlueRaja | CC BY-SA 2.5 |