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For questions regarding how SE calculates the things that they do. For example, how does SE calculate which questions to show in the Hot Network Questions list?

29 questions
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211 votes
32 answers
28k views

Right now the front page Popular tab is fairly broken -- it's a simple descending sort by views. As Joel said in podcast #18, it is "a self-fulfilling prophecy." But this is not intentional, ...
Community wiki
18 revs, 9 users 39%
Jeff Atwood
5 votes
2 answers
249 views

I am well aware that there are endless topics regarding hostile downvoting and how it should be dealt with. I have read a bunch of these threads, but one thing I have never seen raised is persistent ...
Stonecraft's user avatar
  • 212
39 votes
5 answers
2k views

I was asking a question in serverfault.com and this message warned me (correctly!): The question you're asking appears subjective and is likely to be closed So, I'm curious if there any classifier ...
Alex. S.'s user avatar
  • 490
10 votes
0 answers
165 views

I've asked the same question on Mathematics Stack Exchange meta, as my experience explained below was on the MathSE site. It seemed that the situation is something network-wide, and therefore I tried ...
Mohsen Shahriari's user avatar
  • 167
23 votes
5 answers
703 views

Exhibit A: Profile copying does not correctly copy empty age field I just copied my profile from SO to meta. I had not given a date of birth in SO but I had entered date for meta. After ...
balpha's user avatar
  • 165k
5 votes
2 answers
136 views

I'm building a mobile application that transfers points between users via QRCode. I'm concerned about security and am looking for effective simple yes secure algorithm to use. What is the best ...
Abozanona's user avatar
  • 215
7 votes
1 answer
1k views

Anyone else wonder how the default profile pics for Stack Overflow are generated? It must be generated dynamically as it shows random patterns. Can anyone show an implementation of the algorithm in ...
melt321's user avatar
  • 171
27 votes
1 answer
356 views

Is there any algorithm on SO (that the community knows of) which decides when and how many posts a user can review? Let me elaborate below. I sat down with a colleague of mine and we both clicked on ...
Force444's user avatar
  • 445
-4 votes
5 answers
179 views

I asked this question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7259674/guess-the-5-letter-word. As I commented, the FAQ says, "if your question generally covers ... a software algorithm ... then you’re ...
Dave Aaron Smith's user avatar
  • 95
12 votes
1 answer
245 views

I think Community may have an algorithm issue. This answer was flagged for attention by Community with the message "Possible vandalism of own posts; please check recent activity". Recent activity ...
user avatar
-10 votes
1 answer
314 views

I realize that in Stack Overflow some people always vote, edit, give bounty and answer each other questions to get more points and to get badges. I think that it is not fair, because at first it is ...
Aitul's user avatar
  • 273
-6 votes
1 answer
134 views

Currently the number of votes to delete a question is varying based on the number of votes on it and its answers. It doesn't appear to take views, favorites or 'links to' into account. These are ...
Lance Roberts's user avatar
  • 83.8k
1 vote
3 answers
400 views

Possible Duplicate: How long does it take for badges to be awarded? How are they generated? How do badges work, in terms of implementation and database structure? For example, how are the badges ...
Faisal Abid's user avatar
  • 111
3 votes
0 answers
130 views

I've been noticing that a lot of the time the "Related" section on the right side are not often related to the question. Do we know how this algorithm works? It seems like it could use an update. I ...
tcigrand's user avatar
  • 131
5 votes
2 answers
351 views

Possible Duplicate: How is the default user avatar generated? Geometric designs are automatically generated for each user. I know the designs are gravatars, but what is the algorithm they're ...
Alex Gordon's user avatar
  • 135
1 vote
2 answers
255 views

I asked this question yesterday. It appears building a random DFA, selected with uniform distribution, is more difficult than it seems. Should I be asking this somewhere else, or have I come to the ...
user avatar
3 votes
0 answers
30 views

I am looking to post a question (composed of 4 smaller and related questions) pertaining to the theory, implementation and definition of an algorithm to differentiate mathematical expressions, namely, ...
Dean P's user avatar
  • 231
0 votes
2 answers
132 views

I can't seem to find anything on SO about SO's tag system, and I was wondering how SO programmatically creates the descriptions linked to each tag. I noticed that there are a few descriptions (if not ...
Mr_Spock's user avatar
  • 133
1 vote
2 answers
173 views

Quoting from the Privileges page: Vote Down When you vote down, you are moving that content "down" so it will be seen by fewer people. Vote Up When you vote up, you are moving that content "up" ...
Sergi Papaseit's user avatar
  • 113
4 votes
2 answers
379 views

Possible Duplicates: How does the automatic subjective filter work? What algorithm does StackOverflow use to determine if a question may be subjective? I know this is a discussion of the site ...
Razor Storm's user avatar
  • 149
0 votes
1 answer
172 views

I am trying to find an algorithm for Granger Causality in c#. Is this sort of question dealt with anywhere on Stack Exchange? Or is there some other forum I should look at for questions that are not ...
ManInMoon's user avatar
  • 151
3 votes
0 answers
28 views

I think the tag autocompletion (when creating/editing a question) should rank those tags higher that begin with the entered string. Otherwise it can happen that a tag is not suggested although it ...
unor's user avatar
  • 3,088
3 votes
2 answers
186 views

I noticed that I recently rolled over to "12 months" on my user profile on Stack Overflow and noticed that I also did not get awarded the yearling badge. I have since figured out that it appears that ...
anonymous's user avatar
  • 12.4k
6 votes
0 answers
41 views

I noticed Zeros for the amount of views on my profile – yet I had just been contacted by a recruiter on Careers, who explicitly stated that they had looked at my profile. I found that only public ...
New Alexandria's user avatar
  • 714
1 vote
0 answers
98 views

Possible Duplicates: Which tag is added to the page title? Does it matter the order you tag your question In the browser's title bar, Stack Overflow always displays one of the question's tags ...
laurent's user avatar
  • 2,191
3 votes
0 answers
70 views

Possible Duplicate: Detecting similarity between questions : How? I would like to get the basic idea how this is implemented and how the algorithm works, particularly the way it makes suggestions ...
Dmitry Chornyi's user avatar
  • 131
7 votes
0 answers
73 views

I've found a few words to search for that are pretty good at finding questions to down-vote or close-vote--good enough that it might be worth factoring them into the question score that determines if ...
Brad Mace's user avatar
  • 14.4k
2 votes
0 answers
97 views

Possible Duplicate: How are “related” questions selected? I'm working on a Stack Overflow-like answers site, and I'm trying to replicate the "related questions" feature. Is there a ...
user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
55 views

Hi, I'd like to know what algorithm is used to display recent tags on homepage? How many recent questions tags is taken under consideration when displaying that tag cloud? Any details?
T W's user avatar
  • 535