Mastodawn

Is lemmy working on better default sort options than “hot” and “active”?

https://lemmy.world/post/1630855

Is lemmy working on better default sort options than “hot” and “active”? - Lemmy.world

I’m not really sure where to ask this question. Maybe there’s a lemmy dev community where these kind of discussions already happen. I feel like the default front page in Lemmy is still severely lacking when compared to Reddit’s r/all algorithm. I find hot and top hourly to be nearly identical. The top 6 hour is closer, but still not as good as what the Reddit default front page is.

AVeryCleverName Jul 17, 2023

I sort by new. It seems to work. There’s a severe lack of comments, which I am trying to do my part to rectify.

Max17 Jul 17, 2023

Also when sorting by “hot” I see post without any comments. Always been a lurker in Reddit, here i’m trying to make my best to comment whenever I have something “intelligent/funny” to say (Rarely but still… :D ).

Impulsivedoorholder Jul 17, 2023

I think some of these posts actually have comments, they just aren’t loading or showing up on the instance for whatever reason.

Max17 Jul 17, 2023

Well that would explain it

deweydecibel Jul 17, 2023

Yeah that’s something I’m noticing a lot too. It feels like, at the moment, a lot of the communities are communities in name only. People upvote posts when they see them but there’s not much discussion happening.

Which is something that will improve with time, obviously.

imaqtpie Jul 17, 2023

One thing that I try to do is find other comments and respond to them. A lot of times it’s easier to respond to another comment than to make a top level comment in the post, imo. And it opens up the door to a discussion, which is the while purpose of this platform

Serinus Jul 17, 2023

[email protected] I’ve been doing my best, but it’s mostly talking to myself.

imaqtpie Jul 17, 2023

Hmmm I’ve been on [email protected]

The lemmy.world community has a few hundred more subscribers but slightly less activity. I’ll come join you on [email protected]

Serinus Jul 17, 2023

I’ll go sub over there too. I just want a community that’s not on Reddit.

Dippy Jul 17, 2023

I like top by 6 or 12 hours. Usually a pretty good mix of everything until something better comes up. Still tons of memes, but seeing more and more tech/pics/news/politics posts with it.

higgs Jul 17, 2023

Yeah same. People complain about algorithms but 80% of the posts on my homescreen are posts from the meme pages. There should be a choice for algorithm based feed.

danc4498 Jul 17, 2023

I don’t think people realize what an “algorithm” actually is. Top hourly is an algorithm, for instance.

The advantage of being open source is that all the algorithm logic is accessible by anybody. So they can’t hide nefarious logic in there to push agendas for instance.

sethboy66 Jul 17, 2023

I feel that the mention of reddit's 'r/all' algorithm being better than Lemmy's algorithm certainly shows a clear misunderstanding of these algorithms; r/all can be sorted in the exact same ways as Lemmy, the only difference is that reddit has more active users and thereby more content + people filtering it by voting. I also think people in this thread misunderstand 'algorithm' to mean something solely meant to find posts that they may personally like or at least the least are somehow quasi-objectively 'good'. An algorithm for that can be made, but that is not what the algorithms currently in-use have ever been intended to do.

If someone wants a feed of posts that particularly targets their interests then they'll have to tailor one themselves, just like on reddit.

danc4498 Jul 17, 2023

So, when I go to r/all, it defaults to “hot”. That sorting algorithm is specifically what I’m referring to. And no, that doesn’t exist in Lemmy. Top 6 hours is the closest that I can get to that, but I believe there is tons of logic hidden in the Reddit algorithm that makes the quality of sorting better.

I am not looking for a personalized sorting option. I browsed r/all specifically to avoid that. The front page of r/all always felt special to me. Like content that makes the front page is a big deal on Reddit.

I get that the quality of content isn’t there yet and depends on a larger user base. I just want to know that the front page sorting is being worked on, and maybe what the conversation looks like.

TeaHands Jul 17, 2023

So basically, yes this has been discussed a lot and there are various options for fixing it floating around. A few weeks ago there were all kinds of urgent gamebreaking bugs in the software that needed patching up, but hopefully things like sort algorithm improvements will have their time to shine soon.

As far as what the conversation looks like, here’s a link to all the currently open Github issues searched for “sort”. github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%… Some of them will be more relevant and have more discussion than others, since people tend to make a lot of duplicates, but it should give you an idea of the current thinking.

GitHub - LemmyNet/lemmy: 🐀 A decentralised discussion platform for communities.

🐀 A decentralised discussion platform for communities. - LemmyNet/lemmy

GitHub

sulungskwa Jul 17, 2023

I don’t know how well lemmy sorts by “level of interaction relative to number of subscribers”. For instance on r/all, you’d see a post with 15 upvotes on r/really-specific-thing-from-the-town-i-live-in-with-500-subs right next to a r/askreddit thread with 30k upvotes. In order to see smaller communities, it seems like I have to be on new or hot, but it never seems to make its way up to active.

Odusei Jul 17, 2023

What I really miss from reddit is multireddits, something that Lemmy could seriously benefit from when there are multiple competing communities on different instances focusing on the same topics. I really hope some version of that is on the roadmap.

PhilBro Jul 17, 2023

Yes 100%.

Freeman Jul 17, 2023

I know there are several PRs for this. Or at least were.

Here’s some threads I’m monitoring hoping it’s added.

github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/1113

github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3071

github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/818

I think this with some instance agnostic linking that makes you always stay in your logged in instance, making subscribing and searching easier would be huge

github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/pull/1156

github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/1048

Admittedly the devs seem weirdly hard headed about this but it seems they have blinders on and can only see it from a tech perspective.

I need to go look at those status updates again

Cross-instance "multireddits", that are also automatic and topic-based. · Issue #1113 · LemmyNet/lemmy-ui

I found the issue LemmyNet/lemmy#818 that talks about multireddits, but it seems it's about custom miltireddits that I assume would work like http://lemmy.ml/c/[email protected], which i...

GitHub

macarthur_park Jul 17, 2023

The one advantage that Reddit’s r/all has over the lemmy “all” is that it blocked posts from porn subreddits (and a few other controversial ones).

I’d like to browse all more often since there are so many communities to discover, especially now while new ones are constantly being created. But I won’t do that in public due to all the porn in the feed. Hiding nsfw posts doesn’t really solve the problem since there are plenty of non-pornographic nsfw posts I’d like to see.

TWeaK Jul 17, 2023

This is true, but that doesn’t mean that the implementation your instance is using is exactly the same as what’s in the main lemmy code stack.

Vlhacs Jul 17, 2023

I blocked so many communities because it’s almost just an endless stream of memes

PseudoSpock Jul 17, 2023

teft Jul 17, 2023

Same. I like memes but when people are just shotgunning every single meme from the last 20 years it gets a little old.

tj111 Jul 17, 2023

I subscribed to all non-meme communities and just browse by Subscribed.

poquito_cabeza Jul 17, 2023

Same. If I want memes, I just browse all.

HeartyBeast Jul 17, 2023

Why not look at new in subscribed, rather than all? - or are you subscribed to memes communities?

Magister Jul 17, 2023

Same, and a few days ago I had memes on the front page from 2h ago and some from 2 years ago?!?

Freeman Jul 17, 2023

I am a pretty big fan of new comments as a default sort. Occasionally days old stuff will reappear if comments start up again but mostly it’s new stuff generating discussion.

Top day or 12 hours for a rough daily digest.

And new for well…new.

deleted Jul 17, 2023

I’m tired of blocking memes. Multiple instances and multiple communities.

SokathHisEyesOpen Jul 17, 2023

Lemmy has like a million users, Reddit has closer to two billion monthly active users. It’s going to be a long time before Lemmy’s homepage has the same activity as Reddit’s.

Izzy Jul 17, 2023

2 billion seems kind of high. That is like a fifth of the planets population as active users. I don’t think they even have 2 billion registered accounts including duplicates.

Jon Von Basslake Jul 17, 2023

Bots are inflating that number significantly.

imaqtpie Jul 17, 2023

I think reddit is around 50 million daily, 500 million monthly active users. The good news is that the vast majority of those users contribute nothing of value.

It’s going to take time but there is no alternative, we just need to build Lemmy up one day at a time.

kersploosh Jul 17, 2023

A lot of sites state Reddit has 1.6B monthly active users, but really that number is monthly site visits. From what I can find is more like 400M monthly active users.

Reddit is still a behemoth compared to Lemmy, which has 1.5M accounts but only 70k active users last month.

SokathHisEyesOpen Jul 17, 2023

I pulled that number from their corporate advertising report, so it’s likely inflated. The number was 1.6 billion and I rounded up.

danc4498 Jul 17, 2023

I recognize this as well. Mostly I want to know that discussions are being had about a front page sort, and what those discussions might be like.

Even without the Reddit user count, I think the sorting should be better.

SokathHisEyesOpen Jul 17, 2023

My only complaint is that it keeps showing me stuff I’ve already seen, even though I have “show read posts” toggled to off.

danc4498 Jul 17, 2023

Is that a feature of an app? Or built into Lemmy? I use Memmy, and that is a feature in there.

SokathHisEyesOpen Jul 17, 2023

Idk if it’s part of the app or built into Lemmy. It’s a setting in my profile when I view it within Jerboa, so I’m assuming it is built into Lemmy and exposed by the app. But it’s not working. Maybe Jerboa isn’t successfully marking them as read. Does it work well in Memmy?

milos_obilic Jul 18, 2023

So one in four people, on earth, are redditors? Come on man.

SokathHisEyesOpen Jul 18, 2023

I’m just quoting Reddit. I already said elsewhere that I doubt that’s an accurate number. It’s probably total impressions or something.

paddirn Jul 17, 2023

I almost feel like “New” is the best option personally in terms of seeing better stuff, though it’s kind of hit or miss on how relevant it is.

ribboo Jul 17, 2023

Can only agree with you! But hopefully it’ll come in due time. More people will help as well.

ShowMeYourCock Jul 17, 2023

There’s a PR open for a better sort algo, so once everything is working well with it, then yes.

github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/3378

Feature sort by best by L3v3L · Pull Request #3378 · LemmyNet/lemmy

This will add sort by best. see: #1026 In the case of posts: sort by top posts but by community example result: 1st place post from community A 1st place post from community B 1st place post from c...

GitHub

Klanky Jul 17, 2023

People actually read r/all? I always just kept to my subscribed communities…

danc4498 Jul 17, 2023

I hear that a lot, but it was the best way to see what’s going on all around Reddit. And when I got bored of that, I’d do the top hourly of r/all. That was much more hit and miss, but it was more fun to comment on those posts.

Hextic Jul 17, 2023

I use all to find active communities to add to my collection. Kinda hard to add shit when you don’t know what you wanna add. I feel we need a directory sorted by sub count.

Wooly Jul 17, 2023

Mixed things up and let me see some new stuff, I’d do it every few days to get a change of scenery. Now on lemmy I almost exclusively browse all because the content is lacking even with every community in one place.

dingdongitsabear Jul 17, 2023

I sort subscribed by Hot and all by TopDay (visit once per day to find new communities). works fine for me.

deeroh Jul 17, 2023

I’ve switched from All to Subscriptions only, and I’m getting some really wonky Hot posts. The first ~20 posts are fine, but after that, it starts serving me reeeally old content. (Reproduced in multple apps, so it’s not just Memmy).

imgur.com/a/xfi0xsY

imgur.com

Discover the magic of the internet at Imgur, a community powered entertainment destination. Lift your spirits with funny jokes, trending memes, entertaining gifs, inspiring stories, viral videos, and so much more from users like deerohdeeroh.

Imgur

klemptor Jul 17, 2023

Even on All I’m seeing the same thing with Hot.

BitingChaos Jul 17, 2023

I had stuff in my feed jump from a few hours old to then showing things that haven’t had a comment in TWO YEARS back to showing content from a few days ago.

There has to be a bug somewhere in Lemmy’s API in regards to what posts are returned.

Carnelian Jul 17, 2023

Happening for me too, and I know many others, as sometimes the old posts will have new comments lol

fraydabson Jul 17, 2023

This. That’s definitely a big. It wasn’t always happening and seems somewhat recent.

Lumberjacked Jul 17, 2023

What would be really cool is a quick personalization algorithm. Call it MySort or something. When you subscribe to a community be able to add it to your MySort by “See All” “See Top” “See Less” “See All by this user in this community” “See All with this keyword”

RagingNerdoholic Jul 17, 2023

I don’t have a problem with these sort options per se, but they do need some refinement. Basically, they need to age out sooner. Three-week-old posts are not “hot.”

danc4498 Jul 17, 2023

I have this complaint with “active”. I like the idea of seeing posts where people are still interacting, but it should have some kind of half life makes it more difficult for posts to show up the older they are.

UhBell Jul 17, 2023

Agreed - seeing posts in Active from 2 days ago is a bit too much.

Freeman Jul 17, 2023

I am a pretty big fan of new comments as a default sort.

Top day or 12 hours for a rough daily digest.

And new for well…new.