The Ideal Question

Question

What makes the ideal question? Perhaps it is merely the abstraction of a profound thought and the initialization of a dream, a hope, a thought, a (… 5,024.2 characters omitted). Therefore, I propose that we find such a factor to quantify questions. I propose also that this factor be called Q_F, or the Q-factor. I determine a question's Q-factor as thus:

(Recall that .)

Objective Given a number as input, determine the respective question's Q-factor on PPCG.SE. If the question does not exist, simply output ;-; (the crying emote).

Take, for example, . (this question):

The net votes, in this case, means .

views     = 23435
net votes = 33
edits     = 6
answers   = 30, answers^2 = 900
comments  = 19
charsIOPN = "Joe Z.".length = 6

So:

r_F = 6 / 6 = 1
Q_F = r_F * (23435 * 33 + 6) / (900 - 19)
    =  1  *      773361      /    881
    ~ 877.821793

Please provide at least 2 significant figures on Q_F.

This is a code-golf, so the shortest program in bytes wins.

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Note: Please include three examples of your program running, one of which must be this question. The other two are yours to decide. (This is just a confirmation check.) Also report the time at which you entered the query.

Answer 1

Julia, 411 382 367 355 353 bytes

It's quite long but I'm very pleased that it works!

using Requests
n->(R(t)=readall(get(t));G(t)=JSON.parse(R("http://api.stackexchange.com/2.2/questions/$t?site=codegolf"))["items"];j=G(n)[1];d=parse(Int,match(r"<span \S+n (\d+)",R("http://codegolf.xyz/posts/$n/revisions")).captures[1]);d/length(j["owner"]["display_name"])*(j["view_count"]*j["score"]+d)/(j["answer_count"]^2-length(G("$n/comments"))))

This creates an unnamed function that takes an integer as input and returns a float.

It requires the Requests package, which can be installed using Pkg.add("Requests"). That package provides methods for Base.get() for submitting HTTP requests. It also imports the JSON package (on which it depends, so that doesn't need to be installed separately) which we use to parse the JSON output in the response.

Ungolfed:

using Requests

function f(n::Int)
    # Define a function to submit an HTTP request and read
    # the response, returning a string
    R(t) = readall(get(t))

    # Define a function that submits a request, reads all text
    # as JSON, parses it, and extracts the items field
    G(t) = begin
        api = "http://api.stackexchange.com/questions"
        JSON.parse(R("$api/$t?site=codegolf"))["items"]
    end

    # Get the data for the question using the API
    j = G(n)[1]

    # Scrape the number of edits from the revision history HTML
    # using minxomat's handy shortened PPCG URL
    h = R("http://codegolf.xyz/posts/$n/revisions")
    d = parse(Int, match(r"<span \S+n (\d+)", h).captures[1])

    # Compute the coefficient r_F
    r = d / length(j["owner"]["display_name"])

    # Compute the Q-factor
    Q = r * (j["view_count"] * j["score"] + d) /
        (j["answer_count"]^2 - length(G("$n/comments")))

    return Q
end

Thanks to Dennis and Martin Büttner for golfing help!

Answer 2

Mathematica 10, 381 bytes

f=(a=StringTemplate["http://api.stackexchange.com/``````?site=codegolf"];j=Import[a["questions/",#,""],"JSON"];c=Import[a["questions/",#,"/comments"],"JSON"];r=Import[a["posts/",#,"/revisions"],"JSON"];N[#5/#6*(#1*#2+#5)/(#3^2-#4)]&@@j[[3,2,1,{5,2,12},2]]~Join~{Length@c[[3,2]],Length@DeleteCases[r[[3,2]],_?(("revision_type"/.#)=="vote_based"&)],StringLength@j[[3,2,1,3,2,6,2]]})&

Just three API queries and a lot of indexing, really. Hardest part was trying to understand how to get edits from the available revisions, hopefully I got it right.

Answer 3

Python 2, 392 Bytes

Well, I gave it a shot.

from requests import*;from re import*;l=len
def i(n):
 try:s,r="http://api.stackexchange.com/2.2/questions/%s?site=codegolf","http://codegolf.xyz/posts/%i/revisions"%n;q,c=s%n,s%('%i/comments'%n);i=get(q).json()['items'][0];m=float(l(findall("<span \S+n (\d+)",get(r).text)));r=m/l(i["owner"]["display_name"]);print r*(i["view_count"]*i["score"]+m)/(i["answer_count"]**2-m)
 except:print';-;'

Very similar logic to Alex's Julia answer. I'd like to loop through this to see which question is the most ideal but I'd rather not continually call the api for hours on end.

Answer 4

Groovy, 459 457 bytes

Pretty much like the rest of the answers.

import groovy.json.JsonSlurper
import java.util.zip.GZIPInputStream
def f={n->def j,d,u={p->new JsonSlurper().parseText(new GZIPInputStream("http://api.stackexchange.com/2.2/questions/$p?site=codegolf".toURL().getContent()).getText()).items}
j=u(n)[0]
d=("http://codegolf.xyz/posts/$n/revisions".toURL().text=~/<span \S+n (\d+)/).getCount()
println((d/j.owner.display_name.length())*(j.view_count*j.score+d)/(j.answer_count**2-u("$n/comments").size()))}

Saved 2 bytes thanks to Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ!

Ungolfed:

import groovy.json.JsonSlurper
import java.util.zip.GZIPInputStream

def f = { n->

    def stackApi = "http://api.stackexchange.com/2.2"

    // Fetch json from stackexchange rest api
    def getItems = { pathParam ->
        //Stackexchange compresses data, decompress before parsing json
        def httpData = "$stackApi/questions/$pathParam?site=codegolf".toURL().getContent()
        def deCompressedData = new GZIPInputStream(httpData).getText()
        def json = new JsonSlurper().parseText(deCompressedData)
        return json.items
    }

    // Get the edit count from the html page
    def htmlPage = "http://codegolf.xyz/posts/$n/revisions".toURL()
    def editCount = (htmlPage.text=~/<span \S+n (\d+)/).getCount()

    // apply formula
    def json = getItems(n)[0]
    def r = editCount/json.owner.display_name.length()
    def Q = r * ( json.view_count * json.score + editCount) /
                (json.answer_count**2 - getItems("$n/comments").size())
    println(Q)
}

f(16327)