[Discussion] the archive-after-a-year policy: keep, change, or scrap
the archive-after-a-year policy: keep, change, or scrap — a position I have arrived at slowly and would like tested.
What the ranking does, in case you assume it is hiding something.
The hot ordering combines the magnitude of a submission’s score with its age, so that a new post with moderate support can outrank an older one with more. The controversial ordering weights total vote volume by how evenly it splits, so a heavily contested thread rises above a small evenly-split one.
Both are published, and both are reproducible from the score and timestamp shown on every submission — one member here rebuilt the ordering in a spreadsheet to check. The consequence worth knowing is structural: feed position rewards early agreement, so the top comment is frequently not the best answer. Sorting by controversial occasionally is genuinely worth doing.
Feed position is a function of early votes and time. That structurally favours agreeable early answers over correct late ones, which is why sorting by controversial occasionally is worth the effort.
The ranking functions are published: the hot ordering combines score magnitude with age, and the controversial ordering weights total volume by the balance between up and down votes. Both are reproducible from the numbers on each submission.
If somebody has the same thing measured a different way, post it next to mine and we will see whether they agree.
best — the order this archive was captured in
Left up and flaired Proposal — it has replacement wording, which is what this board asks for.
Submissions older than a year are archived: readable, linkable, and closed to new comments. That keeps a three-year-old thread from being reopened with a reply nobody will see in context.
the wiki is editable by anybody with standing on the site
Argued against the strict evidence rule for a year. Then read a supplier thread on another site and stopped arguing.
Correction: that rule applies to the vendor boards specifically, not site-wide. The wording is on the rules page.
evidence rules are strict here on purpose
How a rule actually changes here, since people assume it is arbitrary.
Somebody posts a proposal with replacement wording — not a complaint, actual text. It gets argued about, usually for a week or two. If it survives, it goes in with whatever amendments came out of the argument, and the change is announced with the reasoning attached.
The reason wording is required is that it is the only thing that can be evaluated. "The vendor evidence rules are too strict" cannot be adopted, rejected or amended. A proposed sentence can. Several rules on this site started as a comment in a thread like this one, which is the strongest argument for the process.
sort by controversial occasionally, it is worth it
What would the new rule do to the vendor evidence standard?
Vendor source pages carry an outbound link to the supplier’s own storefront, marked nofollow and sponsored, disclosed on the page and again on the funding page. Nothing is received for it.
Edited a wiki page for the first time and nothing bad happened, which is apparently the point.
the archive-after-a-year policy is deliberate
Checked the sponsor disclosure because I assumed it would be vague. It was extremely specific and slightly boring.
Checked the sponsor disclosure because I assumed it would be vague.
Agreed — concrete wording or it is not a proposal.
rule-change proposals need a concrete wording, not a complaint