optimistic

In response to the discussion over the top story on reddit's front-page at the moment, we've made the hot page no longer count down votes. Down-votes still influence your recommendations, which, by the way, are in for a major overhaul soon, but the hotness algorithm is only going to pay attention to the up votes for the time being.

In addition, where the score used to be displayed as "points," it's now displayed as "ups." There are a few glitches still (when you vote it says "points" still, for instance), but this is a potentially temporary change.

One change that we should see immediately is that the stories that are currently controversial, but formerly had a score near 0, are now bubbling up on the hot page.

We're not sure the exact ramifications of this change, but we're going to give it a couple days to see how it works.