Browsing, popularity and account standing

The dashboard's timeline browser lists public timelines. To keep spam out of it without blocking anyone from publishing, it ranks by account standing. Standing is computed from what an account has done and how long it has existed. Only administrators see it (#103).

What browsing lists

Browsing (public timelines with no search text) lists:

the public timelines of established accounts;
featured timelines, whoever owns them.

A timeline with sensitive-content labels is never featured, and readers who aren't signed in, or whose accounts may be under 18, don't browse it.

Other public timelines are still reachable:

By link: anyone with the address can open them, as before.
By search: a text search finds them, listed after established accounts' matches.
On their owner's profile: listed there, and among a reader's public favorites.

An owner who isn't established yet sees a note under Sharing & settings → Visibility saying how to become established.

Established accounts

An account is established when it is:

in good standing: not suspended, not marked untrusted, and with no moderation restriction in force on anything it owns; and
confirmed: a confirmed email address, or a Google, GitHub or Facebook sign-in; and
at least 30 days old, or at least 7 days old and endorsed.

An account is endorsed when an endorsing account has starred or publicly forked one of its public timelines. An endorsing account is any of these, and never the account itself:

a confirmed account at least 30 days old;
an administrator;
an account marked trusted.

Administrators and accounts marked trusted are always established.

Standing

An established account's standing runs from 0.4 to 1, the sum of:

Part	Adds
Base	0.4
Age	up to 0.4, growing to 30 days
Two-factor authentication	0.1
Endorsing accounts	0.02 each, up to 0.2

The total is capped at 1. An account that isn't established has standing 0. Administrators and accounts marked trusted have 1.

Sort	Ranks by
By popularity	The total standing of the accounts that starred or publicly forked the timeline
Trending this month	The same, counting only stars and forks from the last 30 days
By stars	The raw star count

Each account counts once per timeline, and an owner's own stars and forks count for nothing. So a crowd of new accounts adds nothing, and an established account's star counts more the longer it has been around.

When it updates

What changes	Updated
A star or unstar	The timeline's popularity at once, and its owner's standing
An administrator's change to trust, suspension or the administrator role	That account at once, the accounts it endorses, and the popularity of what they starred
A moderation restriction or lift	The owner's standing, the same way
Accounts ageing, email confirmation, two-factor authentication, published forks, trending	A sweep every 15 minutes, and once at migration

At 100,000 accounts, 200,000 public timelines and 200,000 stars, a sweep takes about 4 seconds.

Administration

Site administration → Users shows each account's standing and why:

established, with its standing and endorsers; or
what it still lacks (a confirmation, its age, an endorsement, or a restriction in force).

Standing overrides it:

Setting	Effect
From its activity	The default: computed as above
Trusted	Always established, with standing 1. Use it for known contributors, institutions or the site's own accounts.
Untrusted	Never established: its timelines leave browsing, and its stars and forks count for nothing

Seeding marks the seed account trusted, so the operator's curated timelines are listed.

Data

Table	Holds
`oc_account_standing`	Each account's standing and endorser count (`server/standing.mjs`)
`oc_timeline_popularity`	Each timeline's popularity and trending scores
`oc_users.trust`	The administrator's override: `trusted`, `untrusted`, or null

The two score tables are kept apart from the accounts and timelines they rank. Recomputing them never rewrites those rows, and never sends live-update notices to open timelines.