probabilistic chooser

In order to avoid positive feedback loops on first posts and temporarily highest ranked posts, page output is randomized based on an algorithm that rewards high posts without being deterministically based so that they're always first.

This is explained in a gist: probabilistic chooser. It basically uses the techniques in Genetic Algorithms for gene selection.

Given the following items and vote percentages:

• "I'm the best!!": 40%
• "This is really good": 30%
• "I like this one": 20%
• "I might be the best but no one notices me." 10%

The algorithm will display the last one at the top 10% of the time, allowing more votes to accumulate on an otherwise bottom post.

See decentralized order