YTMND Front Page Algorithms

This is a work in progress containing algorithms for the content boxes on the front page, while this information could be used to exploit the system, it's not too hard to figure out on your own.

Current Front Page Algorithms

"Worthwhile YTMNDS": YTMNDs with a score above 4.0 and a number of votes fitting between 4 and 425.

"Up and Coming YTMNDS": YTMNDs created within the last 48 hours that have a score above 3.0 and a number of votes fitting between 3 and 300.

 Some users have expressed disdain at the fact that once a site reaches 300 votes its removed from the Up and Coming list.

"Top Viewed YTMNDs": YTMNDs sorted by views of the time segment (today, this week, all time, etc) with a score filter to filter out horrible sites.

Suggested NEW Front Page Algorithms

Write new algorithms here.

"Up and Coming YTMNDS":

Vote Limit = (300 * (Score - 2.5)) This way, a site rated a 3 (meh) would have to get 150 votes to drop off, 3.5 (pretty good) would need 300, 4 (nice) needs 450, and a 4.5 (amazing) would need 600. Just dropping thoughts, and it can be tweaked to get the vote limits you want. Stevetheninja 20:44, April 15, 2007 (EST)

"Others":

Max, have a section of your favorites sites of the week or something, Max, have a #wop section, Max, put your The truly random YTMND Creator, on the fp so I don't have to open up your stupid old post. --Black-Llama 19:22, April 15, 2007 (CDT)

Tokens, a new separate voting system

Perhaps users could be given 'tokens' that they may give out to sites they like; this is similar to votes/favorites, but limited in number;

• The number granted will be limited and might be fixed (static) or dynamic;
• There could be different TYPES of tokens, eg:

• 'best site ever', only one per user
• 'site of the day', one per user PER DAY, may NOT be 'saved up', transfer expires after one day

• maybe only once per site (cannot vote for the same sites again, although another sort can be created)
• maybe only vote for sites created recently, a fixed time period ago

• They should be (IMO) transferrable (you can change your mind and give it to another site), there could be a time limit on how often you can transfer (eg once per day or another number) to prevent cheeze, or as essence of the token type (site of the day tokens 'expire' and become 'fixed' after 24 hours and may not be moved/changed; there might be a release on the fix if the site is edited

• The number of some tokens granted could also be dynamic, calculated by algorithm depending on contribution or other factors, extra ones of some type(s) could be awarded for outstanding achievement or other honours

• Likewise, there could be ANTI-tokens, used to down-vote stuff the user dislikes, limited in similar ways

• Because there may be MULTIPLE TYPES of tokens, with their own separate content box, we can experiment to see which type is more successful, less prone to cheeze/abuse, etc; may give a 'trial run' on the front page to see how well a system works

The system above is a yes/no only system, you either give a token or you don't (similar to current FAVing), but there could also be another system whereby a user can RATE sites, for example:

• User's top 10 today (or 20 this week, best 50 ever, etc), where you can only place a limited number of the sites you like the best, in descending order

• Same as with the tokens, you can have an anti-list, eg 'lamest fads ever', 'most overrated this week', etc

• Also a NSFW-only list, may also for tokens

• The sites that get the best overall score across all the users' lists can be placed on the front page

The different types of scores could also be combined in algorithm on different boxes if so desired, eg whether anti-votes counter the pro-vote score, or if they are disallowed

Again due to the stated ease of messing with content boxes, these systems could be voluntary to participate in, and can be given a test run on the front page or the front test page

This would be different from user VOTES and FAVORITES because only a limited number can be given; this will make people pick the most worthy sites as opposed to indiscriminately 5ing/faving anything you find in some way neat, or cause a user you like made it. Skullers 21:19, April 16, 2007 (CDT)

Suggested Changes to Front Page Algorithms

"Worthwhile YTMNDs":

Worthwhile section would be sites that have fallen off of the up and coming in the past, not sites that only got around 100 votes. I'd suggest 4.1-4.6 rating and over 300 votes (with no cap). BTape 17:30, April 15, 2007 (CDT)

"Up and Coming YTMNDS":

Up and Coming would have 20 sites. Anything rated over 3 could be shown in the list just as it works currently. After 500 votes the site would fall off. This would essentially allow a site to be on up and coming for an entire day if deserved and would catapult the sites that fall off up and coming with high ratings right to the top voted. Top viewed does not often gain a site enough votes after it leaves the up and coming, so this way the best sites would be more likely to make top voted. BTape 17:30, April 15, 2007 (CDT)

Another good idea presented by frenchbreadpizza is to have a time limit rather than a vote amount, though I still like the idea of good sites transferring from up and coming to top voted. BTape 18:57, April 15, 2007 (CDT)

Instead of having it limited to 300 votes, have it limited to a set number of hours. If a site is on the U&C for 12 hours, it will be able to shine without sticking around too long. Let's say there's a site in the U&C that truly rocks. People will flock to it, upvote it, love it, and it will hit 300 votes in no time. Now let's say there's some lame Nintendo site or some other fanboy thing. Most people won't even bother to view it, meaning that it will take much longer for it to achieve 300 votes. And it, in turn, will spend more time in the Up And Coming than the site that actually deserves it. Giving them a set time limit will put them on equal ground. In that 12 hours, the good site could get thousands of votes, and the lame fanboy site could get 100. But they both had the same time upfront, they both had the same chance, and they both got the most they could. Everyone wins. frenchbreadpizza

First, this is all my opinion, which may be completely wrong, and should not (please) be taken as anything near fact. But as BTape says, raising the Up and Coming vote dropoff would probably be a welcome addition, for more than one reason. First, the sites could make Top Viewed if they were deserving. One may argue that increasing the limit would basically increase the number of votes on all "pretty good" sites to 500 (or some other number), and wouldn't benefit the Most Voted, but my opinion is that the extra places between 300 and 500 would "filter out" most of the "pretty good" sites (they'd fall off after 300 but before 500 to better sites) to leave the exceptional sites to take the spotlight. Stevetheninja 19:04, April 15, 2007 (EST)

You could just make it so that it's dependent on number of votes in an amount of time, and the value of those votes; i.e. a site that sits on the up and coming with a couple high votes but then get no votes would get dropped the same as a site that gets downvoted.

For Up and Coming, you could experiment with weighted voting. Users whose votes tend to be closer to the average for a YTMND would have their votes weighted higher than users who tend to be off-base (e.g., upvoters and downvoters). That way you get the most leverage out of the first few votes on a YTMND and reduce the influence of gimmick voters. Or, if you want to get even more leverage, you can take into account information about how much a user tends to vary from the YTMND average, and by how much. So if a user tends to rate YTMNDs 1 star lower than the average, you'd add one to their vote when computing the average. One good way to do this would be a simple linear regression: [YTMND Average] = a0 + a1 * [User's vote]. Once you've estimated a0 and a1, you just plug in the user's vote on future YTMNDs to get an estimate of the YTMND average. Perhaps you could also use the R^2 value from the regression as a weight (conveniently, R^2 is always between 0 and 1), which would take into account information about the variance of the user's votes from the YTMND average -- so erratic voters would have less weight than reliable ones. Re-weighting users each night would save processing. I'd be happy to think more on this or talk about how to implement it in a relational database; I'm getting my M.S. in statistics right now, so it's something I enjoy. --Sk19842 21:26, April 16, 2007 (CDT)

"Mod Favorites":

Mod favorites could be expanded to include all the favorites of the mods and it would then have enough content to be worth showing on the front page. BTape 17:30, April 15, 2007 (CDT)

"Idiot Filter":

Users must pass a standard intelligence test and be verified "Not Completely Worthless" by mods in order to have their sites get on up and coming. You know who you are. Actually, you probably don't. But everyone else does.

"Nsfw Panel":

The nsfw panel should have sites marked nsfw, and if that site was on recently created it should be taken off recently created and added to Nsfw panel.

SonOfPrince 16:14, April 15, 2007 (PST)

"The Jenius Ideas":

Time Codes: a site that consistantly gets a high number of votes over a given period <x> is likely to be a higher quality site. If for example over a period of 30 minutes a website created in the last 3 days received 15 new votes 4+ then it could be considered more likely to be a good site.

voting ratio: the # of logged in users that view the site vs the number of them that vote >= 4 and you have another good indicator. Again this could be considered over a period of time for UaC. General idea is for good sites pepple will be more prone to voting.

10 stars: the introduction of a 10th star rating, somewhat like favourites but a person would have an expendible quantity of them, something like one 10 star vote for every 2 weeks they have been an active member (posting comments, ytmnds, voting).

Asset Thief: It strikes me that origional content that is re-used will generally be better content. A site being the first to use content that then has its assets used in many other sites could receieve a ratings bonus.

--Jenius 20:30, April 15, 2007 (CDT)

Best in topic w/ Hubs and Authorities:

• I don't have much time to explain, so search for "Hubs and Authorities" or look in the Cornell INFO 204 course notes (it's not available publicly - the cite is Peter Coy, Business Week, 6 March 2006) for details. The authors were thinking of using websites as both hubs and authorities, but we have it easier.
• Authorities = lists of favorites, or list of 5-star ratings for some user, etc.
• Hubs = YTMNDs

1. Get a keyword. i.e. Let a user input a keyword, or have a predefined/precomputed list of popular keywords or fads. The second is probably more feasible.
2. find a bunch of YTMNDs (the naive way) and lots of favorites lists containing some of those YTMNDs
3. YTMNDs with lots of incoming pointers = higher hub score (ex. score = # of incoming pointers)
4. Authorities (favorites lists) with lots of high-scoring YTMNDs = higher authority score (ex. score = sum of hub scores pointed to)
5. Recompute hub scores (YTMNDs with lots of high-scoring authorities pointing to them = even higher hub score, ex. sum of authority scores of those that point to it)
6. divide by something to keep the numbers sane
7. repeat 4-6
8. Take the top x and display them

• Could be improved on by using some sort of clustering mechanism instead of a keyword, and then labeling the cluster afterwards. See http://expertvoices.nsdl.org/cornell-info204/2007/03/01/networks-that-cluster/ where I badly tried to explain one that I found in Nature mag. The only problem - how to define "similarity"? Something involving favorites lists again?

AySz88 21:05, April 15, 2007 (CDT)

Featured Artists

Users that have an average site rating of 4.0 (or whatever you determine) with a minimum of 20 sites (again can be changed) are featured in this main page tab. Sites that have been created in the past 3 days by these users will cycle thru this tab, randomly showing any 5 eligible sites on each refresh. How often do the "Ytmnd superstars" produce a crappy site?

• This section could also require other users to "vote in" Featured Artists. Each account could have X ammount of "Artist Favorites" that could be used similiar to the Favorite site vote--if a user receives Y ammount of Favorite votes, there sites are eligible for the Featured section

--Ryuudo 20:40, April 15, 2007 (CDT)

Registered Users Only

I don't like the idea of making ytmnd only for registered users. Half the fun of the site is finding a ytmnd that everyone can enjoy, and pasting the URL into an msn conversation. For example, anyone familiar with... television? can enjoy What is Jedi Academy Love? Also, it's registered users that contribute to the fact that good content is constantly being overlooked. It's too easy to make a good site that gets a few votes, but is knocked out of the "recently created" list before it gets the recognition that it deserves (happens to me all the time! :^)). Making both the "recently created" and the "up and coming" boxes greater than ten sites (remember the good old days of the top fifteen?) could help combat this.

--- SevenAteNine 22:05, April 15, 2007 (EST)

Only registered users can vote and give your recently created site the "recognition that it deserves," so the only hit you'd take if only registered users could see your site is the number of views it achieves, which would also be felt by every other ytmnd. It'd be a level playing field. Though it's not the only solution, Max, Registered Users Only is a step in the right direction when it comes to cutting bandwidth costs.

--- ghosttown80 7:30, April 16, 2007 (EST)

Trial By Fire

Sites with less than 1,000 views but over a 2.5 or 2.0 in rating. Maybe sites that fail the trial by fire and get lower ratings than they started with get deleted. --Flakmaster 00:25, April 16, 2007 (CDT)

Classic YTMND's

Make a Front page algorithm with Classic ytmnds with a minimum rating of 3.5.

Up and Coming YTMNDs

To show up in up and coming, a YTMND should have the following:

• rating > 3
• NOT IN TOP 5 VIEWED TODAY
• Number of views must be increasing (Views Yesterday - Views 2 days ago > 0)
• Score must not be decreasing (Rating yesterday - Rating 2 days ago > -.2) [the -.2 is to allow for a slight decrease)

This way, ones that people get sick of (the views decrease because everyone's seen it) disappear. Rlbond86 15:12, April 16, 2007 (CDT)

My Option 1, A fix using the existing types of boxes

To me, ever since around the creation of the U&C, YTMND has become way too fast paced. There needs to be some sites on the frontpage that stay there for a while, allowing fads to be born and a culture to form. Like in the old days, good sites would stay on the top 15 for several days to a week. I know we have the Most Voted On, but i don't think the content is good enough there and it's not enough.

Here's the version i would probably implement today if i had control of this site.

Default Frontpage Layout

• Recently Created
• Up and Coming - Top rated sites created in the last 48 hours with a vote total of between 6-299
• Top Rated This Week - Top rated sites created in the last week with a vote total of 300+
• Top Viewed This Week - Top viewed sites created in the last week
• Worthwhile - Sites with 4+ rating and at least 50 votes
• Mod Favorites
• Random YTMNDs
• Sponsorships This Week

Notice, i say "created in the last..", which is different than it works right now. Right now if you sort by Top rated This Week you'll get sites that were created long before the last week, because it's only sorting it by 'votes in the last week'. In the system i'm proposing, it's excluded from the lists if it's over a week old. Also, no other parameters should be used other than the ones listed above.

Here's how i would set it up

• Left side
• (5) Sponsorships This Week
• (10) Up and Coming
• (10) Top Rated This Week
• (5) Random YTMNDs

• Right side
• (10) Recently Created
• (5) Worthwhile
• (10) Top Viewed This Week
• (5) Mod Favorites

The way this works is that a site is submitted, then if it's good enough, it goes to U&C, then after 300 votes it can go to Top Rated This Week, then if it stays there long enough, it can get on the Top Viewed This Week. After a week, a site can look to be seen on the frontpage in the Worthwhile or Random sections. The Random i added because i think it's important for users to know that no matter what, all sites have another chance at success and none are absolutely shut off in the abyss.

The Sponsorship section i reduced to 5, because yeah it's a good idea, but it is just an idea that was an added part of the site..it shouldn't dominate the frontpage as much as it does right now.

That's about it for now. This is just a recommendation for what you can do right now, without any entirely new types of content boxes or before you add them. 2nd Piston Honda 15:27, April 16, 2007 (CDT)

Now that i'm looking at it more, there are some problems with this version, like the need to have a daily pulse of what's being viewed alot on ytmnd which the Top Viewed currently serves, and what this different understanding of "top rated/viewed this week" would mean for the rest of the /browse lists. The role that my "top rated this week" fills is definitely needed though, a ratings-based list with 300 min votes that sites can go to after leaving the U&C, so you might just need to give it a different name. My "Top viewed this week" should probably be replaced with the Top Viewed as it currently is. 2nd Piston Honda 16:00, April 16, 2007 (CDT)