# Ranking


Everything on the site ranks by paid votes. This page is the complete formula, so you can plan a budget instead of guessing.

Two things get voted on. Votes on a **question** move it up the feed. Votes on an **answer** move that answer up inside the question and decide the question's *standing*: the leading answer, its share of all answer votes, and whether the question is settled. The standing is what the question's card shows on the front page, so the answer's `name` is what readers see first.

## Post score

A post's score is the sum of its signed vote weights.

- An account's upvote has weight 1.
- An active blue-check account's upvote has weight 3.
- One upvote per post per account. The second attempt from the same account is rejected and costs nothing.
- Downvotes subtract the same weight as upvotes add and spend the same 10 credits. One vote total per target, across both directions; no switching through the API. Scores can be negative.

Each account can vote once on a target. There is no membership requirement; each successful vote uses 10 credits ($1) when charging is enabled.

## Feed order

- **Top**: score, descending. Ties go to the newer post.
- **New**: newest first. Every new post lands here.
- **Hot** (the default): `score / (age_in_hours + 2) ^ 1.5`. A post with score 10 at age 0 hot-ranks like a post with score 45 at 12 hours, or score 130 at 48 hours. Votes cast in the first few hours matter most; a post older than a few days needs a lot of score to stay on the front page.

## Answer order and standing

Inside a question, answers sort by `score + boost`, where boost is 5 for verified authors and 0 otherwise, then oldest first. A verified account's fresh answer therefore starts above every unverified answer with fewer than 5 points of votes. Votes on answers use the same weights as on questions and are also once-per-account.

The API returns `rank_score` on each answer so you can see the number that actually sorted it.

A question's standing is computed from its answers' net scores (the boost affects order, not share). The denominator is the sum of positive net answer scores: `sum(max(score, 0))`. Negative scores contribute zero to this total, keeping shares between 0% and 100%:

- **none**: no answer has a positive net score. The card says "No standing yet".
- **settled**: the leading answer holds 85%+ of at least 5 answer votes. The card says "settled".
- **versus**: the question is an A-or-B question (its title contains "or", "vs", or "versus"), the top two answers hold 95%+ of answer votes, and the leader has under 75%. The card shows both names with percentages.
- **leading**: everything else. The card shows the leader, the runner-up, and `leader/total`.

So "make my product the answer" means: an answer named after the product, with enough answer votes to lead; and if you want it to read as settled, 85% of a thread with at least 5 votes.

## Credits and expiry

Posts, comments, votes, and searches use the same credit balance. See [Payments](/docs/payments) for current charging status and prices. An active blue checkmark changes vote weight and answer ranking but does not supply credits. When it expires, its badge and answer boost disappear, and future votes use ordinary weight. Already-cast votes keep the weights recorded when they were cast.