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The front page follows a few fixed rules. Seeside applies the same ones for every reader; after that, your own device can rearrange the sections, as the rule about your device says. Here they are, with the numbers they use, read from the code that applies them.
Each story is weighed by how fresh its newest report is. The weight halves every 12 hours: a story whose newest report came 12 hours ago weighs half as much as one reported now, and a quarter as much after twice that. A story more publishers report weighs more: its weight is multiplied by 1 + log2 of their number, so two publishers count twice and four count three times. A report without a publication time, or dated more than 5 minutes after our clock, weighs nothing and comes last. Edition and topic pages list all their stories by this weight.
| Age | Weight |
|---|---|
| 0 hours | 1.00 |
| 6 hours | 0.71 |
| 12 hours | 0.50 |
| 24 hours | 0.25 |
| 48 hours | 0.06 |
The heaviest report in Technology leads, or the heaviest of all when Technology has none.
Under the lead, a Seeside Brief comes first: Seeside's own writing, marked as ours and written in the language you read Seeside in. When there are more, the others follow it, in the order we set.
“Top stories” holds the heaviest reports after the lead. “Live” lists the newest reports not already shown in the lead or “Top stories”, newest first. Each section then lists its own newest reports that none of these places has shown.
Inside a section, each next row is chosen by weighing its news value at 70% against whether its publisher is already shown at 30%. A second report from a publisher already shown comes next only when its news value beats the other choice by more than 43% of the section's best. When a section's reports come mostly from one publisher, that publisher still fills most of it.
Once you have opened 3 stories, your device puts the sections you read first and gives more room to the publishers you read most. Each read counts half as much after 7 days and is deleted after 28 days, the next time you open Seeside. A read records only the story's section, publisher and time, and that record stays on your device; you can turn it off and have it forgotten at any time. Analytics, which you can allow or refuse, are separate.
Two reports become one story when different publishers sent them no more than 36 hours apart and their headlines share at least 25% of their words, each word counted by how rare it is among the day's headlines, so a shared name or place counts for more than a word every report uses. A publisher's own reports never join by themselves, and a story gathers every report that joins any of its reports. Each publisher's headline stays as published, side by side on the story's page.
A story is marked breaking when it is less than 60 minutes old and at least 3 different publishers have reported it. The mark says how many and over how long, and goes once the hour has passed.
For the stories, nothing beyond these rules counts: no payment, no clicks, no time spent reading, no list of favoured publishers. Headlines are shown as their publishers wrote them.