Alexis, your posts are getting more and more insightful! Great stuff.

To add to the discussion, I think that it also depends on the target audience or the product’s core users and what stage the product or service is currently at.

For example, Mind Valley’s SocialRank reveals a minimum of what most people would need to know about how their blog discovery engine works. Maybe the more it becomes ‘mainstream’ Mind Valley might need to open up a bit more, although it’s entirely up to them to share the details of their algorithms.