how it works

an honest tour of the algorithm.

what we measure

every day, each person on the index gets three signals pulled, both for the past 7 days and the 7 days before that:

wikipedia pageviews — how often people clicked through to read about them.
google news headlines — how many publications wrote about them.
hacker news mentions — how much the technical-cultural conversation is engaging.
reddit posts — how often the broader public is talking about them.

we'll layer in more sources over time. signal diversity matters.

the itness quotient

itness = 50+ heat+ spread+ vibes+ newness− decay

it's a deliberately simple formula. five components:

heat −20 to +35

week-over-week growth in total signal volume. dampened on small bases so a 10× rise from 5 mentions to 50 doesn't earn the same as 1,000 to 10,000 — loudness matters, not just velocity.

spread 0 to +10

how many distinct platforms they're appearing on. one bubble isn't enough; cross-pollination is what "it" means.

vibes −5 to +10

sentiment tilt. mostly neutral today — real sentiment analysis is still on the roadmap. negative vibes don't drop you off the index, though — they just earn you a different badge.

newness +10

first time on the index? small bonus to help debut entries surface past the long-established sticky names.

decay −15

was top-10 last week and now scoring under 40? you collapse into the formerly-it graveyard, hovering on for one more snapshot.

smoothing

raw daily scores get exponentially-moving-averaged with yesterday's:

itness_today =0.4 × raw_today +0.6 × itness_yesterday

real moments still surface — they just build over two or three days instead of one-shot whiplash. flash news cycles dampen; sustained attention climbs.

trends

the small ↑3 / ↓2 /· pills next to each name are the rank change since yesterday's snapshot. since itness is smoothed, ranks tend to move gradually — a position move of more than a few in a single day means something real is happening.

badges

main character: rank 1 with itness ≥ 70 — they own the week.
it by accident: high score riding negative vibes — infamous, but undeniably "it."
first time it: debut entry with a strong score.
quiet it: high score on low absolute volume — niche, but devoted.
formerly it: fell out of the top 40 with prior top-40 history.
it-curious: rank 41 — the honorable mention, knocking on the door.

the 12-month trajectory

every profile page shows that person's rank over the rolling year. inverted y-axis — rank 1 sits at the top, where you want to be. the chart fills in as the daily snapshots accumulate.

transparency

the source is open. read it, file issues, or open a pr if you want to nominate someone:

github.com/everydev1618/itppl →