Ask HN/PG : Why are comments ordered like this?

Looking at the arc 3.1 source, I'm not sure why that's the case.

The real work here is done by * frontpage-rank* . It's implemented as follows:

  (def frontpage-rank (s (o scorefn realscore) (o gravity gravity* ))
    (* (/ (let base (- (scorefn s) 1)
            (if (> base 0) (expt base .8) base))
          (expt (/ (+ (item-age s) timebase* ) 60) gravity))
       (if (no (in s!type 'story 'poll))  .5
           (blank s!url)                  nourl-factor*
           (lightweight s)                (min lightweight-factor* 
                                               (contro-factor s))
                                          (contro-factor s))))

realscore subtracts any votes that are noted as "sockvotes" from the item's raw score.

The first few lines here won't change too much here for either comment. Obviously, the 110 point comment will have a higher base score than the 17 point comment. They're about the same age, so (expt (/ (+ (item-age s) timebase* ) 60) gravity) will be about the same for each of them. So the division will come up with a number that's a few times higher for brh's comment.

The interesting part is the multiplication here. I don't think either would be considered a story, so neither is being multiplied by .5; neither has a blank url, so they're not getting hit by nourl-factor.

It comes down to the final part, whether one is considered "lightweight", and what the contro-factor* of each is. It takes into account the number of children of the comment (the visible-family call). It shouldn't make a difference, though -- neither of the posts has more than 20 children, so contro-factor for both should be 1. I think I'm missing something, as what I've said wouldn't explain the ordering.

Notably, though, it doesn't take into either account karma or average karma of the poster to determine rank.

Edit: as ChaosMachine pointed out, it does take into account users' average karma: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1923716 . Ey pointed out that pg's post is here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1398764

Interestingly, the author of the 110 point comment has no submissions and only one comment - that one.

Average comment karma of the poster plays a significant role in determining comment order.

Possibly still due to the time decay function. I don't know exactly when each comment was created, but pg's comment may have been more recent (within 24 hours). I haven't looked at the inner workings, but I imagine that upvotes might also be weighted more for how recent they are. Example: pg's comment may have received 17 upvotes within a minute of posting, and his post was 4 hours after brh's, and brh's upvotes happened slower, or before pg's comment.

This is all speculation. Maybe someone who has looked at the code could confirm or debunk this.

Link for easy clicking : http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1162965

The karma points are probably weighted by user, so that users with higher karma carry more weight per point.

Note that pg can do whatever he wants in the REPL.

I haven't noticed any thread ordering tomfoolery before, but he's definitely hidden posts from the index pages before without [dead]-ing them.

Is it because pg's comment has a more developed (and karmaful) subthread?

More comments on pg's thread.

As an experiment; let's upvote chaosmachines comment to 5 add 1 comment, leave mine get mine to 3 & add 3 comments.