What I mean is someone sets up a new community, blasts it with a bunch of content to get things started, or sets up a new community bot that makes 20 posts and every other post in my feed is that community. Usually with 1 or 2 votes each and no comments. No matter what way I sort I see this.
I have zero issues with people getting things going within their space, and it’s not a knock against new communities that don’t want to be empty when people stumble across them.
It’s a complaint about the algorithm flooding my feed with so much content from one place that I’ve unfortunately blocked communities over this that I otherwise would have continued to run across and maybe engaged with in the future.
I’m not sure if your first X results should all be unique communities or putting some sort of engagement threshold in place before they show up in the top X posts or something. I don’t really have a perfect answer but to me this is a flaw in the system.
It’s my understanding that there is no algorithm. View only your subscriptions, only communities on your local instance, or the entire fediverse. Sort them however you want. Mix it up to find what makes you happy.
All that said, I personally would like to avoid seeing any account less than, say a week old. Maybe a filter coded into the interface would work.
Isn’t “hot” “new” etc an algorithm? I don’t think there is an algorithm-less way to sort the feed. Even a date sort is an algorithm.
Technically fair point. I stand corrected.
I understood OP to be pining for an obscured algorithm that surfaces “Interesting” content. I have zero desire for any of that nonsense here. It’s part of the reason that I’m adamantly opposed to federation with Facebook (when they finally figure out how to do it).
There is an algorithm, its just a non-personalized one.
Oh? How so?
High level overview vs a link to the code 😉 https://join-lemmy.org/docs/contributors/07-ranking-algo.html
Technically fair point. I stand corrected. I understood OP to want an obscure algo to surface “interesting” content with no need for user interaction. I’m adamantly opposed to injecting that nonsense here.
Thanks for this link. I keep getting the sort orders confused despite having it explained well multiple times.
It’s a complaint about the algorithm flooding my feed
Or rather, the absence of one.
I guess in a way you’re showcasing where algorithmic sorting/grouping, when not used just to promote ads and increase profitability, can have a positive impact. Because they could for example be used to temporarily suppress exactly what you mean, and require a community to stay “active” for longer than a brief flare-up to start spreading wider and wider.
That being said, I find the lack of such stuff refreshing. You after all select whether you want to see “All” content, and even the sort mechanism.
It’s a complaint about the algorithm flooding my feed with so much content from one place that I’ve unfortunately blocked communities over this that I otherwise would have continued to run across and maybe engaged with in the future.
A neat feature could be the ability to snooze communities. I feel like that could help a bit with what might be considered spam (or generally temporary situations you can’t be bothered with).
That gives me an idea for my scheduler (see !schedule@lemmings.world) - block a community for a specific amount of time.
Love that idea actually
I’ve been using the ‘Top 6 hour’ sort, and it pretty much avoids most of those posts as they have no activity. Blocking the bot accounts that still show up is then pretty easy.
I have found sorting by “active” to be the best sort order. It seems to be mostly immune to concentrated clumps, though it is very slow changing.
I also sort by active.
I deal with the slow changing feed by hiding read posts, that way I always have a “fresh” feed.
The algorithm definitely needs some work.
Also, what’s this lemmitonlinebot that’s flooding my feed and linking to Reddit?
You can disable bot posts in your user settings, or just ban that 1 user
It happens to auto post everywhere just after I finish work, makes using lemmy basically impossible for a couple hours… entire feed is filled with 1 upvote 0 comment bot posts
That bot is one of the few users I’ve had to block. I’m happy to sift through ‘organic’ posts that don’t interest me, but when it’s just reposting Reddit posts and losing the benefit of the discussion under that post, it kinda sucks
Honestly those repost bots are an absolute cancer and shouldn’t be allowed. The ones that post links directly to the posts on Reddit are particularly egregious and fucking stupid.
IDK I kinda like them. I can use them to find something to post to Lemmy without needing to actually open Reddit, especially on my phone where using Reddit is hard
When I select ‘New Comments’, every 3rd (actually counted) post is 1 points, 0 comments. Lol.
This would be a solution if it worked properly.
The “New Comments” sort is actually supposed to be like old school forums, where a new post would be at the top and then each comment would “bump” the post to the top again. It works the exact same way. Although a way to sort by “New Comments” with at least 1 comment would be an interesting option, just need better names for these things lol. But then again if everyone uses that then who will be the first one to comment on any post?
a new post would be at the top and then each comment would “bump” the post to the top again.
That might be a fitting description of the current behaviour, yes. But the doc you linked only mentions the last part. It does not specify wether new posts with no comments are sorted top or bottom. I expected it to sort them bottom, since a post with no comments has no “New Comments”.
if everyone uses that then who will be the first one to comment on any post?
Yes, but not everyone uses that. I switch between different sorting types. Sometimes I am the first to comment.
But the doc you linked only mentions the last part. It does not specify wether new posts with no comments are sorted top or bottom.
it’s not spelled out clearly, but it does say “analogous to the sorting of traditional forums”, they could make that doc more clear (maybe you could take a shot at improving the phrasing? https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-docs/blob/main/src/users/03-votes-and-ranking.md )
I remember when reddit had to implement something similar leading up to the 2016 election, because the entire front page was spam from "the donald* or a few vocal left-wing subs, and it was putting everyone off.
The solution was pretty much what you described.
Even a limit of posts per community would be great. 2-3 from each community max in the first 100 would even be awesome. It would also force a lot of lesser known communities into peoples top posts and help growth in them.
I agree. The turnover of the front page already seems configured to be rapid, so during the less active times of the day, this problem with flooding happens more.
Set your default view to subscribed in user options to show only the sublemmys you are subscribed to.
No such problem on small instances btw.
