Diversification of items for representation to user

A system comprising:

• one or more processors;
• and
• a machine-readable medium comprising instructions stored therein, which when executed by the processors, cause the processors to perform operations comprising:
• receiving, via an electronic network, a search request to provide a user with a collection of items;
• identifying, responsive to the search request, a list of a plurality of items for display to the user sorted based on a distance-based ranking according to one or more criteria, each of the plurality of items having a score and being associated with media content;
• diversifying the list of the plurality of items according to one or more variation features while maintaining the distance-based ranking of the list, the one or more variation features including a media content type, the diversifying comprising processing the items of the list of the plurality of items, the processing comprising:
• selecting a first unprocessed item of the plurality of items as a candidate item;
• determining, with respect to a plurality of time intervals associated with the plurality of items, a time interval that includes a time associated with the candidate item;
• determining a set of items from the plurality of items that meets one or more demotion criteria with respect to the candidate item, wherein the one or more demotion criteria include whether the candidate item and another item of the plurality of items have a same feature value with regard to at least one of the one or more variation features;
• determining a demotion factor based on the determined time interval associated with the candidate item;
• calculating a threshold score with respect to the candidate item based on the score of the candidate item and the demotion factor;
• selecting a number of items from the set of items equal to an interval number value N and setting the score for all other items of the set of items to the threshold score;
• and
• rearranging the list of the plurality of items according to the score of each of the plurality of items based on setting the scores of the other items;
• and
• providing, in response to the search request, via the electronic network, the rearranged list of the plurality of items to a remote device for display in a web-based content feed to the user when all items of the plurality of items have been processed.

A non-transitory machine-readable medium comprising instructions stored therein, which when executed by a machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:

• receiving, via an electronic network, a search request to provide a user with a collection of items;
• identifying, by the one or more computing devices responsive to the search request, a list of a plurality of items for display to the user being sorted based on a distance-based ranking according to one or more criteria, each of the plurality of items having a score and being associated with media content;
• identifying one or more variation features for diversifying the list based on features of the plurality of items, the one or more variation features including a media content type;
• diversifying the list of the plurality of items while maintaining the distance-based ranking of the list, the diversifying comprising processing each item of the list of the plurality of items by:
• selecting a first unprocessed item of the plurality of items as a candidate item;
• determining, with respect to a plurality of time intervals associated with the plurality of items, a time interval that includes a time associated with the candidate item;
• determining a set of items from the plurality of items that meets one or more demotion criteria with respect to the candidate item, wherein the one or more demotion criteria include whether the candidate item and another item have a same feature value with regard to at least one of the one or more variation features;
• determining a demotion factor based on the determined time interval associated with the candidate item;
• calculating a threshold score with respect to the candidate item based on the score of the candidate item and the demotion factor;
• selecting a number of items from the set of items equal to an interval number value N and setting the score for all other items of the set of items to the threshold score;
• and
• rearranging the list of the plurality of items according to the score of each of the plurality of items based on setting the scores of the other items;
• and
• providing, in response to the search request, via the electronic network, the rearranged list of the plurality of items to a remote device for display in a web-based current feed to the user.