Test cases:
The good:
- Under ‘Passing a string literal as a type argument to a class template’, the ‘Votes’ order currently places an answer with a not-quite-solution workaround (+56 / −2) first. The ‘Best’ order by this script places an answer with a real solution, with some pointers to language standardization efforts (+22 / −0) first. The latter I would have found pretty hard to discover otherwise; I count this one as a success.
- Under ‘Why is it string.join(list) instead of list.join(string)?’, the script puts an answer that points to the actual mailing list discussions where this was decided (+381 / −0) at the top, above the top-voted just-so story that doesn’t actually justify the choice (+1376 / −5). I think this one counts as a success as well.
At least for me, as of April 2022, the much-touted ‘Trending’ order still puts the naïve incumbents first, though the ‘Best’ answer comes second.
The bad: On the other hand, under ‘Is RefCell an appropriate workaround to borrow two mutable elements from a vector?’, my answer (+3 / −0) appears below the accepted answer (+1 / −0). The accepted answer is perfectly fine, but the fact that apparently the harshness adjustment (picking lower points from the confidence interval for answers with more votes) makes scores non-monotonic is a little concerning. Maybe I should tweak the adjustment or ditch it altogether.I added a simple artificial correction that ensures harshness adjustment keeps sorting monotone if all answers have few votes.
The meh: Under ‘What algorithm did Microsoft use to dither colour in early versions of Windows?’, which I dare claim to be probably one of the worst victims of the fastest-gun problem, my own in-depth researched answer (+24 / −0) appears second, while the accepted misleading answer (+171 / −1) appears first, just like with naïve scoring. I don’t think any other scoring method could do much better here, though. There is only so much information that can be drawn from vote counts alone. For my answer to rise to the top under the ‘Best’ order would require a large number of people to vote down answers simply for being incomplete; I doubt that many are particularly motivated to do so.