Sort by Popularity is..

[zaj]

Off. After the 2nd page, it starts going to things that only have around 20 votes.

[rylab]

Actually, that was a recent improvement based on feedback that only things with a ton of votes were showing up... it's working as intended. Now tasks with super high popularity-ratio (i.e. 95%+ yes votes, minimum of 20) that were proposed relatively recently, will show up high in a popularity sort. Tasks with a ton of positive votes still show up as well but there is a time-decay factored in as well now.

[cookiemonster88]

how is this an improvement?

surely you could have just added a randomise feature (which i saw suggested lots of times) rather than messing up the popularity sort function. it's not sorting by popularity now is it.

my task was consistently getting votes every day, slowly creeping up the pages. now with it this way, it has not got any votes in the last 24 hours. not pleased.

[rylab]

There's no way to please everyone. The new algorithm takes into account several new factors such as number of recent positive votes, overall time a task has maintained a certain high popularity ratio, etc.

This system was tested quite a bit, and is overall a better indication of a task's actual popularity without being biased towards total number of votes or generic popularity ratio. I'm sorry your task is getting less votes, but it's better for the community as a whole based on overall feedback.

[syreeninsapphire]

I know this kind of algorithm can be quite complicated, but I think it needs a bit more tweaking.

The third most "popular" task has gotten an 18/20 approval rating after 16 days. One of my tasks has gotten a 35/36 approval rating after only 3 days, and it isn't anywhere in the first several pages. I'm having trouble seeing how a higher percentage and more votes in less time doesn't constitute "more popular."

[rylab]

Hmm. You're right, something is a little off with the time decay. We're looking into it closer, thanks.