this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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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.

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[–] anolemmi@lemmi.social 157 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] GodOfThunder@lemm.ee 61 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 28 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Another, related issue to this is that I find the three frontpage categories (All/Local/Subscribed) to be too blunt of a sorting method.

I would really love if we had the option to create subcategories to our Subscribed feed, so we could group related communities and end up with different frontpages for News/Sports/Memes etc.

[–] Phlogiston@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

I too would like a 'custom feed' functionality.

[–] Delphia@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Being able to filter by language would also be super helpful.

Im sure the Swedish gaming community is great, some lovely Svens and Ingas but I dont speak swedish. Being able to autofilter subs by default language would be awesome.

[–] gonzo0815@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

That's a really great idea!

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[–] Socialphilosopher@lemm.ee 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If a community has grown a lot, unfortunately it takes up all the posts on the homepage. If I were a developer, I would sort by weighted success. For example, if the "x" community has 1000 subscribers and the post gets 100 likes, it has ten percent success. If the other 'y' community has 100 people and gets 11 likes, it has 11 percent success. This overrides the post in community x because the post in community y is more successful. This is the logic of 'weighted success'. With this logic, a better ranking formula can be created.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The thing is, a 10% upvoted post on a 10,000 people community is more popular than a 90% upvoted post on a 1000 people community - those 10,000 people in the former community are 10,000 people interested enough in that kind of thing to subscribe, whilst only 1000 people are interested enough in the other kind of thing.

So it does make sense to put the former higher up in the global page when sorted by popularity because globally that post was more popular.

However I do think there should be someway to as a user push down posts from certain communities without outright blocking the whole thing: maybe som throttling-down based on the rate of posts per time (i.e. the upvote threshold for posts from a community to come out in All depends on the number of otherwise qualifying posts in the last X days/hours, thus explicitly targetting the "flooding with posts" itself) rather than the straight count of upvotes or the proportion of upvotes that you suggest.

That said in the meanwhile I'm really tempted to block the more generic meme communities.

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[–] BURN@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] G_Wash1776@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Memes, memes as far at the eye can see

[–] BURN@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

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

[–] Rottcodd@kbin.social 21 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Note that this is one of the advantages of having an account on a smaller and/or more focused instance or having multiple accounts.

All "Alls" are not the same. Actually, the "All" displayed on a given instance is everything local to that instance and everything from other instances to which someone on that instance has subscribed. So if nobody from that instance has subscribed to a particular community on another instance, then for all intents and purposes, it just doesn't exist. Even on "All".

Granted that it's somewhat unlikely for an instance to not have someone somewhere along the way subscribe to some notably popular community, it is possible, and the smaller and more focused the instance is, the more likely it is.

[–] WndyLady@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for teaching me. I can see that causing challenges down the road.

For example, I'm always on the lookout for all things quilting. If someone names their quilting community "Fabric Hordes" (not impossible, just look at phenomenon like r/animetitties) it wouldn't come up in my explicit searches, and is very unlikely to be sought out or found by others in my instance.

[–] Rottcodd@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Right, but there are lots of ways around that.

There's already been a fair amount of demand for some method to group communities by interest, so it's essentially guaranteed that somebody is going to provide some way to do that, and likely multiple somebodies are going to figure out multiple ways.

[–] travysh@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Ah. I had noticed that lemmy.world's all seemed different than lemm.ee's, which in turn was also different than kbin. That's good to know

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[–] fhqwgads@possumpat.io 20 points 1 year ago

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?

[–] Chickenstalker@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Browse by New. Bam! Problem solved! Stop being slaves of the Algo. Actively search for stuff you like while also actively block those you don't like.

[–] No_Money_Just_Change@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

Newest comments works best for me as it gives a nice mix of big and small posts

[–] BeautifulMind@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

[–] RaoulDook@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I found a workaround to that problem, just do a page refresh after going back from a post to the list of posts.

[–] makatwork@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

The first page problem happens to me, too.

[–] SuperFola@programming.dev 14 points 1 year ago

Fyi the devs aren't reading this (and probably won't be before long, since they are busy just coding a lot of features). Best place to ask for this is on the issue tracker (first check if it hasn't been asked before), even better implement it yourself if you can!

[–] theneverfox@pawb.social 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] bonnetbee@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Awesome, that you develop tools for lemmy! Thank you.

A question: Did you consider to publish your app on the F-Droid-Store? I only use apps from there and the only usable app for lemmy is jerboa. An alternative to that would be awesome, as it has quite a lot of problems.

[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Better solution: don't use Lemmy as your feed, use a feed reader (RSS). There are per-channel feeds that you can sort and filter using parameters.

Doing things this way will also help create the open web we all want to see, where "forum" is not a synonym for "Reddit" or "Lemmy", where you can also follow the goings-on in other places and not miss anything.

[–] PixelProf@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I really think it's important to not see Lemmy as one singular community, or a lot of important use cases will go ignored.

[–] zoostation@lemmy.fmhy.ml 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I think there should still be a strictly chronological feed that isn't algorithmic, but blocking the bots that import a lot of low quality content from reddit would be easier than blocking the individual subs.

[–] dryguy@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm definitely not suggesting that any of the existing feeds need to be done away with. They all have their uses.

[–] bingbong@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Can't you just sort by new?

[–] dryguy@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That just gives you what's new. I'm looking for what is new and popular. I usually browse by top 6 hours.

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[–] souperk@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

yes! yes! yes! I have the same problem.

My suggestion is to add a view with subscriptions ordered by the selected criterion (i.e. new/active/hot/top) and below each community there is vertical list with posts from that community sorted.

This would allow see what's up with the communities we follow and then jump in those communities if we find anything interesting.

[–] little_cow@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

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

[–] RedstoneValley@lemmy.fmhy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Btw, It's already possible to block all bot posts

[–] little_cow@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Ohhh is that what unchecking the "show bot account" does I thought it removed the badge indicating a user was a bot account. Thanks!

[–] spacedancer@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Top from the past 6 or 12 hours works better than Hot IMO. It feels more like the traditional reddit front page.

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[–] hawkwind@lemmy.management 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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!

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 4 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] Hypx@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

@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.

[–] jdsquared@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

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,

[–] minnix@lemux.minnix.dev 3 points 1 year ago

I think this problem is relegated to being registered to larger instances. On one hand you get lots to choose from when it comes to your local feed, similar to how Mastodon works, on the other hand you have the problem you just mentioned. I know you bring up the problem of narrowing what you see, but if you're going to be on a big instance, there really is no other way than to subscribe to those communities you have a specific interest in. I'm on a smaller instance and I just take the time to go through communities that I may have an even fleeting interest in and subscribe to them, avoiding larger generic communities. This is the same strategy I employ when it comes to my news feed as well. I only subscribe to RSS feeds from sites I have an interest in.

[–] Emu@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

Most communities I'm in just seem to post about Reddit and its soooo boring, like get a life and make original content

[–] roi@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)
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