A feed for useful work.
The Valen Systems Network surfaces studies, benchmarks, code, and field notes through a small recommendation system whose rules are published here.
The feed distributes useful work
Each published post enters a candidate set, receives a limited score, passes through diversity and abuse controls, and appears in a stable order.
Candidate to ranking
The public candidate set contains published Network posts. Latest mode shows the newest published work. For You mode combines recency, official source status, followed topics, and a member's own saves, replies, opens, and hides. Personal signals are deliberately bounded so one action can’t dominate the feed.
Recent work gets a limited boost
Recency decays over a 72-hour half-life. A new post gets a chance to be seen. A burst penalty and result caps keep repeated publishing from occupying the feed, while a small deterministic tie-break keeps the order stable.
Controls against gaming
The server limits an author to four posts in ten minutes, rejects an exact duplicate from the same author within 24 hours, and deduplicates one member's open, save, reply, or hide signal for a post within 24 hours. The feed also diversifies by author and topic after ranking. These controls reduce burst posting, duplicate farming, repeated self-signals, and single-author capture. They don’t pretend to make manipulation mathematically impossible.
Rank isn’t verification
A higher position means the post fit the current policy and viewer context. It doesn’t mean the post is correct. Reports, source quality, and editorial review remain separate checks.
Why this architecture
The design takes architectural inspiration from X's public descriptions of candidate generation, ranking, filtering, and mixing. Valen Systems' implementation is smaller and independently written. Its ranking rules are published so people can understand why a post appears.
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