I’ve noticed that there are a few communities that tend to dominate when viewing all. Some days it gets to where looking at all isn’t very different than just looking at Memes@lemmy.ml or 196@lemmy.blahaj.zone.
Before someone says “you can just block communities you don’t want to see,” it’s not that I never want to see them, it’s that I want to be able to have a view that shows me what is new and popular in a wide variety of communities. I appreciate seeing a few good memes in my feed. The problem is when that’s all I see. Changing the sort from active to hot or top x days doesn’t have much effect on which communities dominate, so that isn’t the solution either.
“You can just subscribe to communities you like”. True, but that has the effect of narrowing what I see. I’d like a view that showed me new things I never thought to subscribe to.
Lemmy devs - if you are reading this - it would be nice to have a feed that limited the number of posts showing up from any particular community. It could be a simple cutoff of 2 or 3 posts, or maybe some sort of weighting function to cause additional posts from the same community to appear lower in the sort order for that feed.
I’d love to hear what devs and other users think about this.
Edit: To everyone saying “just sort be new” - yes, that has its uses, but it only solves part of the problem. I’d like a feed that shows me what is new and popular, but from more than just one or two communities.
@dryguy The algorithm needs to be improved. It needs to adjust for the number of boosts/favorites that large communities get. You should be seeing posts from all of the subs you are subscribed too and not just the most popular ones.
I like to use “Hot” instead of active as it seems to fetch posts from a more diverse set of communities
I’ve also heard that view by new comments is solid as well
Btw, It’s already possible to block all bot posts
Ohhh is that what unchecking the “show bot account” does I thought it removed the badge indicating a user was a bot account. Thanks!
This you? https://lemmy.fmhy.ml/comment/1180416 it’s a direct copy/paste of that comment plus one sentence
I’m really confused lol, that is not me I have this account and one on beehaw.
How strange I had a different comment but I edited it and it changed to that one …
Top from the past 6 or 12 hours works better than Hot IMO. It feels more like the traditional reddit front page.
Thanks for the suggestions, I’ll try that
I’d love some kind of per community bias adjustment even for subscribed communities. Like, I don’t really want to remove them cause memes are great, but because !memes@lemmy.world and 196 post so often my subscribed feed is pretty dominated by them no matter how I sort it.
For “All” some kind of adjustment based on subscribers makes sense, but I don’t even know if that’s possible given the way Lemmy works. Maybe a “show me less” button that moves the same bias adjustment just for communities you’re not subscribed to?
I’m with you 100%. I did find that searching by hot comes out a little better. But I think I’m finally ready to just block the meme and the rule subs.
Also there’s just not as much content here as. Reddit. That will eventually change,
I generally use “New Comments” as my sorting and it’s a little bit better, but still the same spammy communities end up on top
Memes, memes as far at the eye can see
So many memes
I don’t hate it yet, since they’re the memes of my childhood/teen years, so tbh I find them funnier than the post 2016/18 bullshit
I read something the other day that they’re working on a new sorting algorithm that would limit it to the top few posts from each community within a given time frame. Specifically to address this issue.
No idea on timeframe or further details, or if I even summarized it correctly lol.
deleted by creator
Yes, they are working on a so called “best” sorting: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/3378
And yes, they are working on “multi”: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/818
deleted by creator
Someone from reddit should quit and recreate their algorithm for front page.
No, thanks. Their front page is rage baity shit
I don’t know about anyone else’s experience, but I’ve noticed that any time I click into a post view and then back out, I’m taken to the first page of posts, no matter if I was 2 or 3 pages on. If the redirect respected where it came from instead of going to home, that could reduce the impact of post-order sorting. Also if the list pager had more options than ‘prev’ and ‘next’ (maybe a few numbered pages between or beyond) I could get beyond that 3rd page without getting there feeling like an illustration of the schlemiel the painter’s problem
The first page problem happens to me, too.
A quick, but a little dirty solution for this, would be communities having “tags” in their metadata. This wouldn’t prevent spam, or an accumulation of four trillion tags, but you could easily add “only these tags,” or “not these tags,” to any feed. User objects have metadata that is used like this (as the “bot” flag) already. I’m just familiar enough with the code to know it wouldn’t be a slam dunk, but it’s also not a breaking change or re-write!
Tags would be great, and a much better way of controlling your feed than blocking communities or instances. Just because I usually don’t want to see memes or shitposts doesn’t mean I’m never in the mood for them. It could also potentially help people who don’t want porn in their feed but want to keep non-porn NSFW visible.
This has already been mentioned a few times. Just find the relevant issue on GitHub and give it an upvote.
There’s also a pull request https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/3378
There’s also a comment by Nutomic (a main dev) which shows they are aware of threads like this:
There are a lot of user complaints that posts from the same few large communities are always at the top.
Sorting by new works pretty well for me. There’s still the couple of them showing up, but there’s a lot more variety to what I see that way.
I’m right there with you - I’m making an app called flemmy, and I have 12 more tasks on my list before I’m putting it on the play store - should be this weekend at the latest. Iphone build shouldn’t be that far behind. I can also make a desktop build if anyone wants it, but right now have no intentions to host a site myself - I strongly feel the data the app collects shouldn’t leave your device
Version 1 is about creating something close to the Reddit apps I used to use, and it’s there - just needs a little more polish (and to let you post… I’m more of a commenter, so I forgot that was a thing for an embarrassingly long time)
I can support all sorts of filters, from keywords to hiding specific posts to “snoozing” communities. I can also save your place when you change sort methods or accounts - it’s what I always wanted for Reddit.
Also, I have support for redirecting links - Twitter to nitter, YouTube to pipe, etc.
Version 2 is going to focus on your feed. Already I connect to multiple servers (it’s a real headache, but the foundation is there), so next is stitching feeds together and custom feed algorithms. What you mention is at the top of my list - a way to tweak the feed based on all sorts of filters.
Ideally, I want it to adapt to you - using upvotes and comments to tweak your feed. All on your phone - it’s amazing what you can do on a phone when you’re not interested in data collection
I just made !flemmy@Lemmy.world, I’ll post some screenshots when I need a longer break
I see a wider variety of active topics by sorting All by New Comments.
Idk it seems like a problem that will sort itself out as Lemmy grows, and artificially limiting how many posts from a community can reach the front page seems like a suboptimal solution that’s going to have unintended consequences down the line.
I’d agree if the coms in question were niche but so far in my experience they never are. When it comes to communities dominating All, it’s always bottom-of-the-barrel memes and porn. The posts from non-garbage communities that show up are usually by themselves
Everyone’s definition of bottom of the barrel will be different, and nobody’s personal content preferences should be forced on the community as a whole. If you really dislike those communities that much you can block them.
I do, my blocklist is quite large already
The point I’m making is that the communities that would be most affected (negatively) by it are the giant low effort meme/shitpost ones that don’t “need” the exposure to thrive because they’re general interest communities
Right now those communities are more important than ever. They are what’s going to bring more people here and grow the fediverse. I don’t want to start hiding popular content at a time when Lemmy most needs to be popular.
Is the goal of Lemmy to follow the reddit playbook where quantity is more important than quality? I much prefer thoughtful, specific content to “mass appeal” content. There’s no shortage of places to find the latter, why does it need to be the focus here?
Because this is donation-funded. Having a big audience is the only thing that can ensure financial stability long term.?
And I don’t think content that is funny rather than informative is inherently bad or less important. There’s nothing wrong with this place being fun and not just some stuffy content classroom.
The real issue I see is that it’s all reposted reddit content so Lemmy looks like a crappy clone instead of being its own thing. For those who enjoy those posts, why would they switch to a site that has the same posts but with empty comments sections?
I’m not saying it’s some huge problem or anything. I just don’t think limiting the amount of frontpage posts per community will negatively affect the site
Doesn’t Reddit totally weight by size of community tho? Not saying we should just ape the old site but I suspect it’s actually necessary for smaller communities to grow naturally.
I think there are better ways to highlight smaller communities and grow them more organically, like a community dedicated to new and small communities (sorry if I fucked up that link, I’m new here) could highlight a new community each day worthy of our attention. Reddit used to have a subreddit of the day.
Right now the number one thing federated social media needs is just more users. I worry they’ll feel discouraged if they stop seeing the content that gets the most upvotes right now.
I think I’m going to have to disagree with you on that. New communities is fine but as someone who’s been active over there for a while it definitely seems that the issue is that it’s impossible for small communities to get any traction on the main page. I think the most important thing for long term growth is making sure that new users don’t come over here and find that all the communities they are interested in are dead.
My people
Rule
