[s-phi-nl]

I trust you are aware of http://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments ?

[alister]

Is it possible to implement features similar to the above without being a ycombinator insider? Since upvotes aren't visible on comments, other than comments you made yourself, how could you calculate it? (Are the upvotes on comments available through an API for example?)

[cperciva]

Yes, but that's just the highest scores -- which is a very noisy measurement given that it depends on how many people read the threads in question.