I think some factor for decreasing votes over time should be included. Exponentially decaying rates seem reasonable, and the decay time constant can be calibrated with the overall data in the domain (assuming we have data on voting times available).
That’s likely way too fast. It’s not that rare for people to comment on posts several years old (especially on Main), and I’d guess such people also vote comments. (Well, I most certainly do.) You can use an exponential decay with a very large time constant, but that would mean that comments from yesterday are voted nearly as often as comments from three months ago. So, the increase in realism compared to a constant rate isn’t large enough to justify the increase in complexity. (OTOH, hyperbolic decay is likely much more realistic, but it also has more parameters.)
I think some factor for decreasing votes over time should be included. Exponentially decaying rates seem reasonable, and the decay time constant can be calibrated with the overall data in the domain (assuming we have data on voting times available).
That’s likely way too fast. It’s not that rare for people to comment on posts several years old (especially on Main), and I’d guess such people also vote comments. (Well, I most certainly do.) You can use an exponential decay with a very large time constant, but that would mean that comments from yesterday are voted nearly as often as comments from three months ago. So, the increase in realism compared to a constant rate isn’t large enough to justify the increase in complexity. (OTOH, hyperbolic decay is likely much more realistic, but it also has more parameters.)