> The new page is sorted by date ignoring hotness, and if something has a negative score it's not going to show up on the front/hot page anyway.
The key word there is "anyway". We're discussing the code that makes them not show up on the hot pages, so the word "anyway" makes no sense. If your theory were true, I would expect him to say: "This code is important because if something has a negative score then we don't want it to show up on the hot page", but he doesn't; rather he treats negative articles not showing up as law of nature. Paraphrasing, he says "This code is unimportant because it doesn't do anything, because article wouldn't have shown up anyway" But it does do something, and they would have shown up.
My theory is that the confusion comes from him saying "front/hot" page. Everything he said is true about the front page, and the front and hot pages use the same algorithm. But the same algorithm applied to different data yields very different results, and everything he said is blatantly false when discussing the hot page of small, low-traffic subreddits.
In short, I think he's trying to say "hey, negative articles won't show up on the default front page no matter what, so what are you talking about?". And the response is "yes, but it has a huge impact everywhere". (Notably: The hot page of small subreddits, as well as some customized front pages and multireddits.) You can't conflate front/hot the way he does, because the bug is ONLY shown when _hot() is called on a low-traffic source.
> The new page is sorted by date ignoring hotness, and if something has a negative score it's not going to show up on the front/hot page anyway.
The key word there is "anyway". We're discussing the code that makes them not show up on the hot pages, so the word "anyway" makes no sense. If your theory were true, I would expect him to say: "This code is important because if something has a negative score then we don't want it to show up on the hot page", but he doesn't; rather he treats negative articles not showing up as law of nature. Paraphrasing, he says "This code is unimportant because it doesn't do anything, because article wouldn't have shown up anyway" But it does do something, and they would have shown up.
My theory is that the confusion comes from him saying "front/hot" page. Everything he said is true about the front page, and the front and hot pages use the same algorithm. But the same algorithm applied to different data yields very different results, and everything he said is blatantly false when discussing the hot page of small, low-traffic subreddits.
In short, I think he's trying to say "hey, negative articles won't show up on the default front page no matter what, so what are you talking about?". And the response is "yes, but it has a huge impact everywhere". (Notably: The hot page of small subreddits, as well as some customized front pages and multireddits.) You can't conflate front/hot the way he does, because the bug is ONLY shown when _hot() is called on a low-traffic source.