Methodology
Frontpage Radar turns raw Reddit activity into readable signal. We believe a number is only useful if you can see how it was built — so here is exactly how every score on the dashboard is calculated. No black-box models; everything below is a transparent, inspectable heuristic.
The Emotionally Charged Indicator
Our headline meter estimates how emotionally intense Reddit feels right now, on a 0–100 scale. It is a weighted blend of emotional and activity signals — each measured 0–100, then combined with these weights (they sum to 1.0):
| anger | 22% | |
| controversy | 20% | |
| velocity | 16% | |
| excitement | 14% | |
| fear | 12% | |
| commentIntensity | 8% | |
| sarcasm | 8% |
We weight anger and controversyhighest because, in practice, those drive the “Reddit is on fire” feeling far more than raw volume or positivity.
The five levels
The KPI indicators
Viral Velocity
Average upvotes-per-minute across the top trending posts. Spikes when something is taking off right now.
Controversy Index
Built from upvote ratios and comment-to-upvote balance. High means people are arguing, not just agreeing.
Outrage Meter
Anger language blended with controversy. Climbs during pile-ons and PR fires.
Hype Meter
Excitement + positive language. Tracks launches, wins, and good-news surges.
Cross-Sub Spread
How widely activity is distributed across the tracked communities. High means a story is jumping subreddits.
Trend Freshness
How recent the current trends are. High means the board just turned over; low means stale topics linger.
Where the data comes from
Signals are computed from public Reddit listings (hot & rising posts across the communities we track). Emotion is scored with a transparent keyword lexicon over post titles and comments. Velocity is derived from upvotes-per-hour since a post was created; richer time-series velocity and history charts arrive as we build out our background data pipeline.
We respect Reddit’s API rules: a descriptive client identifier, cached requests well under rate limits, and links back to the original posts. We aggregate public activity into trends — we do not profile individuals.
Not affiliated with or endorsed by Reddit, Inc. Reddit is a trademark of Reddit, Inc.