How V4 Works
This page explains how point classes, trust levels, roles, main feed ranking, and subfeeds work in the current platform logic.
Point Classes
Public-facing reputation is intentionally simplified. The internal score is a weighted blend of discovery, contribution, likability, interaction, cleaning, recruiter, legacy contribution, and security signals.
Interaction Points
Reward daily participation, voting, commenting, sharing, and other community actions.
Logins, comments, votes, shares, and other positive interactions.
Likability Points
Reward content that the community likes, comments on, shares, and responds to positively.
Upvoted posts, well-received comments, and other appreciated contributions.
Contribution Points
Reward original content creation across links, posts, media, and articles.
Posts, links, videos, images, and articles that attract real engagement.
Cleaning Points
Reward reports and cleanup work that helps remove spam and improve site quality.
Approved reports, moderation wins, typo fixes, broken-link cleanup, and tag work.
Discovery Points
Reward being early to spot content that later becomes popular or influential.
Early discovery of rising links, resurrected old gems, and breakout posts.
Recruiter Points
Reward bringing new members into the ecosystem and growing active communities.
Subfeed growth and high-quality member acquisition.
Security Points
Reward stronger account security and responsible security reporting.
Verified email, safe password setup, 2FA, and security issue reporting.
Trust Levels
Hidden reputation is calculated from these signals:
discovery x 1.6 + contribution x 1.35 + likability x 1.25 + interaction x 0.85 + cleaning x 0.55 + recruiter x 0.9 + legacyContribution x 0.35 + security x 0.4
The score is then mapped to a trust level threshold. Higher trust generally comes from sustained quality contributions, useful interactions, successful cleanup, and healthy account behavior over time.
| Level | Minimum Hidden Reputation |
|---|---|
| Newcomer | 0 |
| Regular | 40 |
| Recognized | 120 |
| Trusted | 280 |
| Veteran | 520 |
| Curator | 900 |
| Pillar | 1400 |
| Legend | 2100 |
Roles
Default account role with normal posting, voting, commenting, bookmarking, and reporting access.
How to achieve: Created automatically when you sign up and remains the baseline role.
Can publish links, images, video, and other media directly into the main feed.
How to achieve: Derived automatically from contribution and discovery signals when activity stays strong.
Can review reports, remove content, and manage moderation workflows.
How to achieve: Derived automatically from high cleaning, security, and trust signals while activity remains recent.
Can publish editorial content and announcements into the main feed.
How to achieve: Derived automatically from strong contribution and interaction signals while the account stays active.
Can help keep the platform clean by earning trust through verified cleanup and reports.
How to achieve: Derived automatically from cleaning signals and trusted activity patterns.
Recognizes users who help grow communities and subfeeds by bringing in new members.
How to achieve: Derived automatically from recruiter signals and sustained contribution behavior.
Full administrative permissions, including role management and user administration.
How to achieve: Granted manually by an existing Admin; this is not auto-derived.
Automatic Progression
Most elevated roles are not manually assigned. They are derived from your current point classes, trust level, and recent activity.
- Activity decays into the user role if you go inactive for too long.
- Admin is the exception and must still be granted manually.
- The public label shows your trust state instead of exposing raw internal score.
Main Feed and Ranking
The home feed shows links filtered by:
- Published status
- Not removed by moderation
- Your NSFW preference (if NSFW is off, NSFW links are filtered out)
Links are ordered by descending ranking score, and promoted subfeed content can mix into the main feed when it passes the promotion threshold.
Major positive factors include:
- Freshness (newer links get a stronger boost)
- Engagement velocity (interactions per hour)
- Unique commenters and trusted interactions
- Discovery momentum from click activity
Major negative factors include:
- Spam probability signals
- Ragebait probability signals
- Age decay over time
In practice, links change rank when people vote, comment, click through, or when the link simply gets older and its freshness advantage decays.
SubFeeds
- Any logged-in user can create a subfeed.
- The creator is automatically added as both moderator and member.
- Users can join or leave subfeeds from subfeed pages.
- Posting to a subfeed requires membership (or moderator/editor/admin privileges).
- Inside each subfeed, links and posts are ranked by the same ranking score logic as the broader feeds.
- Successful community growth in a subfeed can feed recruiter points back to the organizer.