Trying to understand the youtube comment ranking algorithm. It's way over-complex. Here's the best explanation I could find. Google's never published it but these people did a lot of maths to figure it out - a few years ago, so it could be outdated and they mightn't have found every detail.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions...tube-comment-system-sorting-ranking-algorithm
Basically, it depends on four things:
1) Time it was posted,
2) Like/dislike ratio of a comment,
3) Number of replies,
4) And, believe it or not, WHO posted it (ie the overall like/dislike ratio that person has received over the whole of youtube).
You can dislike comments, but nobody can see the number of dislikes. However, the dislikes very strongly affect the ranking order.
So my particular comment is sliding down the ranking gradually because it was posted some time ago (1), but also probably because when I posted it I'd never posted before so had a decent like/dislike ratio, and since then I expect many naysayers have disliked both that comment (2), and other subcomments of mine (4), so it's sliding down based on all four factors except 3.
So, if we think it's worthwhile trying to maintain good first impressions for anybody looking at the top few posts in that comment section (the only ones that most viewers will read):
- Like the posts that should float up (2). But also,
- Like other subcomments by the people who authored the posts that should float up (3)
- Dislike posts that should float down (2)
- Dislike other subcomments by people who authored posts that should float down (3)
- Post comments on posts that should float up (3), and
- Feel free to make new posts that would be a good first impression for people (1).
This is so ridiculous... But it's interesting from a mathematical perspective.