[michaelt]

Content aggregation sites like HN and reddit often weight upvotes based on time. This makes some sense; an article that gets x upvotes in y minutes is more popular than an article that takes 4*y minutes to get the same number of upvotes!

But on Reddit this has an odd side-effect; as early upvotes are the key to getting to the front page, an article that takes 30 minutes to read doesn't get any upvotes in the first 30 minutes. But a meme or a 10-second gif? Upvoted in seconds, and on its way to the front page.

Of course, Reddit is quite successful; no shame in providing bite-sized posts with quick gratification if that's what the market demands.

[napoleond]

This is a really interesting insight. What do you think would be a good way of levelling the playing field for articles which take 30 minutes to read?