Algorithm to determine thread "hotness"
- by nickf
I'm trying to come up with a way to determine how "hot" certain threads are in a forum. What criteria would you use and why? How would these come together to give a hotness score?
The criteria I'm thinking of include:
how many replies
how long since the last reply
average time between replies
The problems this algorithm must solve:
A thread which has 500 replies is clearly hot, unless the last reply was over a year ago.
A thread with 500 replies that was replied to a second ago is clearly hot, unless it's taken 4 years to reach 500 replies.
A thread with 15 replies in the last 4 minutes is really hot!
Any ideas, thoughts or complete solutions out there?