Has the sorting of answers on Stack Overflow been changed? Because I've realised that the answers aren't sorted by
Votes -> Time
anymore, and they are sorted in a different way. It appears the time isn't taken in to consideration, now they are sorted by
Votes -> Random
If it is deliberate then what is the new order for sorting?
I have noticed that sometimes it sorts the old way, but then for others it appears completely random (apart from the votes).
I find this to be horrible decision (and I know I'm not the only one). We've spent a year now rewarding those who answer well and answer fast. I do not see why this is a problem.
If someone answers fast and they answer poorly, that gives them even more time to get voted down and let the better answers trickle to the top.
It also makes it entirely reasonable now for people to strategically downvote other answers even more so because they no longer have the "safety net" of being the first one keeping them above other answers with the same score. So expect to see a lot more lists of answers that are (0, -1, -1, -1). or even (-3, -3, -3, -3).
I do not see why we have to artificially reward someone for coming to the party late. If their answer is better, it should move up regardless of what time it was posted, and if it is a bad answer, it should move down regardless of what time it was posted.
This is a terrible decision. It'll encourage duplicate answers and strategic downvoting. "Fastest gun in the west problem" was considered a "feature" of Stack Overflow. It encouraged quick answers. If your quick answer was wrong, you would just create more chance to get downvoted.
In most cases (not always, but most of the time) the better answer eventually floated to the top (esp. if was significantly better.)
The new system creates plenty of horrible problems (the slowest cheater in the east (SCITE) problem) just to solve FGITW, which was not a big issue.
For instance, today, I answered a question and a virtually identical answer appeared 3 minutes later and got upvoted. In this specific case, the guy himself was nice enough to upvote me but I honestly don't think it's a good thing to post a dupe answer after 3 minutes and leave it there.
After using this for awhile, I'm going to give the change a big thumbs up for one decisive reason.
I am now free to edit and improve my posts without fear of losing my spot among same-ranked posts. That alone far outweighs any other argument I've seen.
And that's a good thing.
I've given this some more thought and basically I hate this change.
Just now I was reminded of a certain type of question that doesn't generate a lot of votes. I haven't thought twice about answering such questions before because either my answer is good and it'll get voted up or it's not and it won't. Now we have to contend with such answers now swimming about randomly in a bunch of Johnny-come-lately answers to the point where it's really not worth bothering because you now have to also hope that that when a random vote does come in, you're at the top at the right time.
Additionally, it's less worthwhile to put extra effort into answers to such questions as votes are even more of a dodgy proposition.
Also we risk another form of undesirable behaviour. Previously people would put in the placeholder, which I didn't think was a problem. This won't stop that. It'll make it worse. The reason is now you put in a placeholder answer and just wait for a real answer and then cannibalize it. If it happens within 5 minutes who's to say who had it first?
Are we going to rely on people to check timestamps where previously the order alone told them who was first?
How long before the user base at large actually cottons on to this change and just assumes whichever answer is randomly at the top was the first?
All for what?
Edit: I feel compelled to add my own thoughts (in more detail) to this. Well not just this but how it fits into a larger picture. Not that anyone will read it because the redditors will downvote it into oblivion but oh well.
It is by design. Jeff's comment on this answer says
we now sort answers of the same score, randomly
which was implemented to "give some boost to some really good answers that arrive late"
Edit to include my own POV.
I've seen the tactical downvoting right after the random ordering of similarly rated answers was implemented. It's crazy. For a question, around 5 to 7 answers were almost the same and almost all were correct but each got -1, and -2 votes. I think it's causing chaos and is very unhealthy for the community.
The devil you know, or the devil you don't?
They've replaced what i considered a small, extremely limited opportunity for gaming with what feels like a big bold invitation for gamers to have at it.
But now you're playing craps instead of chess. So the fast and the good still have to compete with the gamers, but now the gamers can play around with chance instead of competing with quality.
So long, old devil. I wonder what the new one has in store for us...
I don't understand why people are making such a fuss of the new sorting order.
The most important metric on judging if an answer is good or not is the number of votes, and that's still what the questions are sorted by. Then they are sorted randomly.
If you don't like the new order, write yourself a greesemonkey script and god forbid stop whining.
Personally, the new order prevents those one-hit wonder answers of just posting a link when some of us actually try to write a complete answer and then gets ignored because someone posted a totally incomplete answer answer posted as such:
Which is not the kind of answers SO should have.
Downvote this answer all you wish, the only people which are disadvantaged by the change are the cowboys who tries to fire first with the smallest bullet they can find. At least now a GOOD, THOUGHTFUL answer posted 5 minutes later has the same chance as a one-link wonder crap answers that we are seeing way too often nowadays.
I'm not sure how I feel about this.
On the one hand it's clear that people would put in placeholder answers and then fill them out in the next 5 minutes but, as has been previously discussed, I don't think that's a bad thing. Getting a quick answer is useful. If the placeholder isn't useful it gets downvoted and any benefit of first placement is lost (although you may find #2 or #3 tactically downvote it, even temporarily).
So the question is either what problem did this solve or what benefits does it bring to the table?
I can't help but think that maybe the "its not fair!" crowd have managed a vocal minority on this issue. By "its not fair!" I mean you get responses to issues like people having high rep that basically come down to "its not fair!" (that person X put 8 months more effort in that I did and thus has higher rep).
So one could argue "its not fair!" [tm] (that someone takes the time to quickly get an answer to a question).
It's also worth mentioning that the previous system discouraged "me too!" answers. Sometimes you see 3-4 people post the same answer within a short period. Fair enough. They're typically not aware of each other. But sometimes you'll see someone do it 20 minutes later. They can't not have seen the others so why bother to post the same thing?
This way their answer has as much chance as anyone's of being first (upvotes notwithstanding). So are we encouraging "me too!" noise with this?
oldest the default ordering? I think that is what could be done mitigate this...
I've read the points so far and can see some merit. However I've seen the change already help people who come in with a much better answer but later. Some answers take time to research and explain well (we aren't all Jon Skeet and never will be). This change really helps that.
If strategic downvoting strategies are employed then that is vote fraud, pure and simple. It should be detected and those votes reversed / users disciplined.
I didn't even notice the change.
I’m surprised this change got even noticed, let alone drew so much fire … because, honestly, you all sort by time anyway, right? right?
Oh dear …
Granted, the default sort order (by votes) makes sense for people who have just googled/bing’d for the problem and found the answer on SO. What they want is answers, quickly and they don’t want to read through pages of bad (but recent) ones to get to the gems.
But everyone who has complained about the new system so far has a huge reputation score. You’re the active folks, people! You don’t read, you contribute. You examine the existing answers, correct, amend, chastise, and complete. In one word, you interact. For you (or at least, for me) the answers aren’t isolated but related to each other and reading them in the wrong order (i.e. not in temporal order) would make as much sense as hearing random snatches of a conversation in the wrong order.
The bottom line of all this is: the new algorithm is completely irrelevant for me, since I don’t notice it. I think it might even be preferable for non-contributors. But for me (and for you) it shouldn’t matter. And just in case you’re wondering whether I’m asking you to change your answers ordering, let me remove all doubt: I am.
Of course, if this measure is meant to prevent tactical downvoting, it’s a bad solution. Tactical downvoting could be prevented once and for all if they would just finally implement that tiny request that has been flying around for ages, that you can only downvote if you explain the downvote in a comment.
During this week I had a strong feeling that it was much easier to gain rep from the upvotes then before.
Don't know if it's linked or not, but I finally have the highest* score on SO.
* Among the users with default gravatar
random->random.