Let’s make this concrete. Suppose we have a topic with the following characteristics:
- First post (the one the topic author made) got 1 likes
- Second post got no likes
- Third post got 2 likes
Then the Cred flow from the topic will approximately be:
- 1/3rd to the first post (1 like)
- none to the second post (no likes)
- 2/3rd to the third post (2 likes)
This is approximate because we actually flow a very small proportion of Cred from the topic to every post indiscriminately (an edge with 1/8 weight). This way if there were no likes at all on the topic, the Cred still has somewhere sane to go.
Note that in the example above, the second post may still get some Cred. For example, it’s possible that the third post was a direct reply to the second post, in which case it will flow a bit of Cred there. (I forgot to mention this above, sorry; we do flow Cred from replies to the original post with weight 1/2).
We really need an interactive + visual explorer to make this more accessible. 