Scheme 0 bumping: Thing recently commented on go to the top.
Pro: You can tell where the discussion is Con: encourages Trolls
Scheme 1 Voting: Ala Reddit.
Pro: Democratic popular stuff rises to the top. Con: popular stuff tends to be dumb and scheme privileges majority views.
Scheme 2: following like on some site like hubski.
Pros: You only hear what you like.
Cons: You only hear what you like.
applying combinatorics
scheme 0-1
Voting Bumping
score = (number of upvotes) - (number of downvotes) + number of comments
of course each variable is weighted for time.
order posts by score high to low.
hypothetical pros: Vigorously debated/discussed stay at the top longer even if controversial.
hypothetical con: Weak against trolls but not as weak as scheme 0.
scheme 0-2
bumping and following.
Hard to figure because the two systems are functionally very different but the formula.
rank = time since last comment / (number of comments by people I follow 1)
order low to high.
Scheme 1-2
voting and following
rank = up-votes by people I follow - down-votes by people I follow
Scheme 0-1-2
rank = time / (up-votes by people I follow - down-votes by people I follow + comments by people I follow + 1)
Of course a tradition of community is really the best way.
I suppose Hubski is follow with a pinch of bump. Pretty good to let user choose what they want.
Twitter is pure follow and time. Relevant for a short , fast newsfeed. Any feed incorporate time anyway.
Reddit is pure vote and time. Vote is prone to manipulation. I dont think it's a good system.
Any forum work on bump. It's as bad as vote. I read some instruction manual on how to manipulate forum by bumping irrelevant contents to bury "problematic" thread. Any bump system should consider how it can be exploited.
Facebook is follow and vote -and, as anything, with time factored in-. It seems to be the more complicated of the bunch. I read here - or on reddit- that they just changed their algorithm so your news feed is less dependent of the number of "Like" -which you can buy, as Upvote on reddit-
I dont remember how Myspace worked. It was just a blog with a pinch of follow no?
Good luck with your system. May be you should try some new system (I cant think of any)
More of an exercise than a system I am planning on applying finding a novel system would be interesting though.