Measuring popularity for a particular post?

Question

I'm trying to measure the popularity of a post but there's no current system in place that can do that so that means I have to create one.

Can anyone guide me on creating a heuristic that measures popularity for a post? I'm assuming factors such as # of replies, # of views, age of post, sticky vs. non-sticky, etc. should play in as a factor. I know i'm asking a lot because it's not an easy question to solve but if someone can refer me to an online resource to help me on this task, that would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

Check out some of these other questions: Popularity algorithm, or thread "hotness", and this one from Jeff regarding Stack Overflow.

Answer 2

Reddit.com does something similar and their code is open source.