Like many other k5 readers, I normally list comments in order by their rating. This does a pretty good job overall, but there's one large problem with it.The problem is simple: comments rated, for example, (5.00 / 1) are ranked ahead of those rated (to use a current example) (4.83 / 6).
Conversely, comments rated (2.00 / 1) are ranked behind comments rated (2.33 / 6).
I would prefer this order to be reversed, in both cases. The rationale is simple: A rating from one person (even a very intelligent person) could just be a bit flaky. Ratings from five or more people are usually a bit more reliable.
I would also like it if the unrated posts, instead of either getting left in the basement at the bottom or stuck up front, were put in the middle.
Now, about the actual formula that could be used. There are a number of statistical formulations that are designed to deal with this kind of low-sample-size problem. I'm pretty good at math but advanced stats are mostly beyond me. Also, standard deviations and the like are relatively difficult to code and tend to suck back processor time.
Therefore, I propose a simpler solution: When calculating a post's average score, if it has 4 or fewer ratings, add enough 3 ratings to allow its average rating to be based on at least 5 ratings.
This would produce the following effects:
- All unrated posts would get a "default" rating of 3
- Comments rated 5 by just one person would gain an effective rating of (3 * 4) + (5 * 1) / 5 = 3.4
- Comments rated 5 by two people would gain an effective rating of (3 * 3) + (5 * 2) / 5 = 3.8
- Comments rated 2 by just one person would gain an effective rating of (3 * 4) + (2 * 1) / 5 = 2.8
- Comments rated by five or more people would be ranked the same way that they are now.
I've never read any Scoop code, so I can't comment directly on how this would be implemented. However, it probably wouldn't be too hard to make it an adjustable threshold for the weighting to go away; i.e. change the minimum number of ratings from 5 to some other number.
I am not sure how this would affect sub-1.0 rated comments, though. Perhaps it would be wise to add in a loophole for hidden comments, preventing them from being displayed anyway.
I would also suggest that this be added in as an option, leaving the present ratings-sort options (Unrated, then Highest; Highest Rated First; Lowest Rated First; and Ignore Ratings) intact.
Note: This is a repost of a story that was originally submitted to the queue on the main k5 site. I got back more than a few suggestions to submit it here; now that it's out of the queue over there, I'm submitting it. The original submission had a poll (the same one) - you can get the results here.
