samcarter
Just out of curiosity, how is the order of messages on the starboard determined?
- it does not seem to be chronologically because I see
- 20th Dec
- yesterday
- last Sunday
- it does not seem to be the number of stars because I see
- 2 stars
- 1 star
- 2 stars
![Screen Shot 2020-01-02 at 11.55.01.png](/image?hash=f23d089a9692bc9ad4fa4753e2049f076ba419191f781e0bdc6e403be4c8e154)
Top Answer
Jack Douglas
Each star is given a weight of `1/(g+1)`, where `g` is the number of seconds ago the chat was starred. Then the messages are sorted in order of the sum of the star 'weights' for each star given.
In plain English, messages are shown according to how many stars they have, and how recently those stars were given. Messages *at the bottom* are those that have the most 'weight'.
I think this roughly mirrors how SE sorts starred messages though I confess I didn't look too hard at that.