ManageWP.org improvements, new algorithm & more!

Hey gang,

I am happy to announce that in the past couple of weeks we’ve been busy fixing up ManageWP.org in order to improve the quality of articles served on the Popular page, and the overall page speed. Here’s a short recap of work done.

New algorithm favors fresh articles
A while back we fixed a lot of issues with karma and how they impacted the Popular articles. But that backfired in a spectacular way: the fixed ranking algorithm favored articles upvoted by users with high karma, to such an extreme that these articles remained on the top of Popular for months. So we took another stab at it, and the new article ranking has a much faster decay, helping you see fresh news every day.

Goodbye karma
Karma has been giving us a ton of performance issues, so we decided to drop it. It’s replaced by a much more straightforward activity score, akin to Reddit: there’s no ranking decay, and the more you share, vote and comment, the higher the rank. Top ranking users will have a more influential vote than rookies. Your rank is currently hidden, but at some point we will make it public. It’s worth noting that we’re not resetting anyone’s rank. Instead, we’re calculating it based on your past activity.

We’re actively combating spam
We recently saw a spike in spam comments. Unfortunately, since users can register with just their social media accounts, we had a flood of spam accounts dropping backlinks left and right. So we decided to implement captcha in the comments, and it worked like charm. We also stripped all links from the comments – they are replaced by plain text URL. If you want to follow a link in the comment, simply c/p it.

What’s next?
For starters, we need your feedback on the ranking algorithm. Please fill out the survey and let us know how to improve it:
https://goo.gl/forms/SAzVHU16xeIvmibT2

We also plan to improve the moderation tools and get more volunteers aboard. If you’re interested in helping, let me know, as we’re be expanding our moderation team once everything is in place.

As always, don’t hesitate to drop your feedback in the comments. This website is yours as well, and I’d love to hear any thoughts that would help us improve the experience for everyone.
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/17790/managewp-org-improvements-new-algorithm-more

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2018/08/27/managewp-org-improvements-new-algorithm-more/