Yahoo Forum Archive

Hi Imhiriel,

I'm re-arranging your email because I want Anthony to make sure my
answer to your first question is accurate:

> A question to the "skip"-feature.
> I have ticked off a couple of stories as "skip", but they nevertheless
> show up in any search I conduct.
>
> What is the purpose of this feature? Can I use it somehow to show me
> only the stories I have _not_ skipped - so I can work my way through the
> nominees without always encountering the stories I wanted to eliminate
> from my search?
>

There is a filter, the fifth down from the top, where the last option
will show those stories that you have not reviewed, but also have not
wished or skipped. Because of the way the website is programmed,
selecting this option means the site won't look at the other filters.
So if you select this option it will display all the stories you
haven't reviewed, wish-listed, or skipped - even if you also have a
certain author selected from that filter.

I'm not sure how else the skip feature is used. Thanks for bringing it up.

> > By default this page lists twenty-five stories. The order the stories
> > are displayed in comes from a fairly complicated mathematical formula.
> > The important thing to realize is that the order you see the stories
> > in is different from the order any other user sees the stories in, but
> > it's always the same for you.
>
> This sounds interesting. Can you tell us more about this? What
> determines my or anyone else's
> order?
>

Warning: geek-speak ahead. :-)

I think the formula is something like

ranking # = cos(story ID*user ID)

The system has assigned each user an ID #, I think based on the order
the user's account was created; Imhiriel, yours happens to be 702. You
can see these if you click the "Users" link at the top of any page
(once you're logged in). Anyway, the database multiplies your user ID
with the ID # of that story and takes the cosine of that product. If
you don't remember from high school trig, the cosign takes any number
and assigns it a value between positive one and negative 1. The web
page then displays your stories by this number.

Because your user ID and mine are different, we'll get different
rankings. For instance, let's compare how the webpage would rank

74. "Dragons and Sailboats"
518. "Relief"
523. "Childhood Dreams"

(all by Acacea, as it happens).

My user ID is 16, so for me the website would say

Ranking # for "Dragons and Sailboats" = cos(16*74) = cos(1184) = -0.2419
Ranking # for "Relief" = cos(16*518) = cos(8288) = 0.9903
Ranking # for "Childhood Dreams" = cos(16*523) = cos(8368) = 0.0349

(for those who know trig, trig functions don't resolve nearly that
easily for most things; I'm rounding)

So the website would then display the stories in the order

"Dragons and Sailboats"
"Childhood Dreams"
"Relief"

For you, the ranking #s would be:

Ranking # for "Dragons and Sailboats" = cos(702*74) = cos(51948) = -0.3090
Ranking # for "Relief" = cos(702*518) = cos(363636) = 0.8090
Ranking # for "Childhood Dreams" = cos(702*523) = cos(367146) = 0.5878

So your ranking would be

"Dragons and Sailboats"
"Childhood Dreams"
"Relief"

Which actually turned out to be a bad example. But you can see how,
with a larger group of stories and a larger group of users, you and I
wouldn't get the same listing. The listing is usually unique to the
person because it takes a long time before a trig function will assign
two integers (non-decimal numbers) to the same decimal value, but it
will stay the same each time someone logs in because your user ID
never changes.

Marta