Mastodawn

Viewing posts by all tends to be dominated by a few communities

https://lemmy.world/post/1723295

Viewing posts by all tends to be dominated by a few communities - Lemmy.world

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 [email protected] [[email protected]] or [email protected]. 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. 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 wort 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 uses think about this.

zoostation Jul 18, 2023

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 Jul 18, 2023

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

bingbong Jul 18, 2023

Can’t you just sort by new?

dryguy Jul 18, 2023

That just gives you what’s new. I’m looking for what is new *and * popular.

zoostation Jul 18, 2023

I thought OP was talking about sorting by new but I was mistaken.

Jz5678910 Jul 18, 2023

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.

🌱 🐄🌱 Jul 18, 2023

I see the same thing as you and decided to try and post more about the topics that interest me, also for me “Hot” sort tends to yield more variety compared to “Active”

RedstoneValley Jul 18, 2023

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

🌱 🐄🌱 Jul 18, 2023

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

Colonel Sanders Jul 18, 2023

This you? lemmy.fmhy.ml/comment/1180416 it’s a direct copy/paste of that comment plus one sentence

Viewing lemmy posts by all tends to be dominated by a few communities - FMHY

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 [email protected] [[email protected]] or [email protected]. 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.

🌱 🐄🌱 Jul 18, 2023

I’m really confused lol, that is not me I have this account and one on beehaw

scytale Jul 18, 2023

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

🌱 🐄🌱 Jul 18, 2023

Thanks for the suggestions, I’ll try that

anolemmi Jul 18, 2023

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.

PeleSpirit Jul 18, 2023

I really hope they consider doing a multi subscription sorr as well. I miss being able to go to just the news or just funny, etc.

TheGreenGolem Jul 18, 2023

Yes, they are working on a so called “best” sorting: github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/3378

And yes, they are working on “multi”: github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/818

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

PeleSpirit Jul 18, 2023

Sweetest, pretty close to perfect then. Thanks.

OsrsNeedsF2P Jul 18, 2023

This was an issue Reddit used to have circa 2015. Front page was all League of Legends posts, and then it was all The_Donald posts. Then Reddit screwed up their algorithm and it was literally 100% The_Donald posts.

subway Jul 19, 2023

I don’t need another t_d vietnam flashbacks man, don’t jinx it.

Savirius Jul 20, 2023

The important takeaway here is that it took a long time before it was actually good. They had to try a bunch of different sorting algorithms before they found one that really worked and let you see your small subs just as much as your big ones.

It might take a while here too unfortunately.

EssentialCoffee Jul 20, 2023

Fun fact. r/leagueoflegends was one of the most filtered subreddits from r/all at one point.

JD Squared Jul 18, 2023

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,

fhqwgads Jul 18, 2023

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 [email protected] 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?

Hypx Jul 18, 2023

@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.

SloppyPuppy Jul 18, 2023

Someone from reddit should quit and recreate their algorithm for front page.

El Barto Jul 18, 2023

No, thanks. Their front page is rage baity shit

hawkwind Jul 18, 2023

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 Jul 18, 2023

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.

MBM Jul 20, 2023

Maybe they could even integrate with Mastodon’s hashtags

Rottcodd Jul 18, 2023

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 Jul 18, 2023

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 Jul 18, 2023

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.

Knightfall Jul 19, 2023

So, would it be wise and helpful for a mod or bot per instance to subscribe to as many communities as possible to help the instance’s feed?

Rottcodd Jul 19, 2023

Hell no.

How does that "help" their feed? What possible benefit could there be in using a bot to subscribe willy-nilly to every community out there, no matter how shitty it is?

I mean - if some instance owner wants to do that, that's their choice, and I guess there are people out there who would like the resulting instance filled to the brim with every bit of garbage that exists anywhere in the fediverse, so it's safe to assume that somebody will do it sooner or later. Personally, I think the idea is repulsive though.

Maybe I wasn't clear enough in that other post - I think that the fact that each instance has a different "All" depending on what the members there have subscribed to is a good thing. It means that different instances have different feels, and over time, as they get more established, that's going to be even more the case.

So for instance, a notably tech-oriented instance is going to end up displaying pretty much every tech-oriented community on the fediverse on its All because somebody on the instance will have subscribed to it, pretty much no matter what it is, AND at the same time, all of the stuff nobody's interested in just won't be there at all, because nobody bothered to subscribe to it in the first place.

Granted that that's not going to appeal to people who want to be flooded with every bit of garbage on the entire fediverse when they click All, but they can just go away and sign up with some other instance that gives them what they want. Which I'm sure is exactly what the people who sought out a tech-oriented instance in the first place would prefer anyway.

Knightfall Jul 19, 2023

How does that “help” their feed? What possible benefit could there be in using a bot to subscribe willy-nilly to every community out there, no matter how shitty it is?

I don’t know… You made it sound like the only way for me to have more communities show up in my All feed on lemmy.ca would be if a volunteer on lemmy.ca, be it a bot or mod, subscribed to all the communities they could find. Hense seeing top posts from All communities. And I only meant for a bot or mod to just subscribe. Not to repost everything.

If that isn’t how it works, sorry. It is why I asked if that would work or not.

Rottcodd Jul 19, 2023

You don't need a mod or a bot to do it for you. You can go find communities on other instances and subscribe to them, and that all by itself gets them added to the All feed on your home instance.

Or you could just register an account on a different instance that slready has more stuff on it, like lemmy.world.

travysh Jul 20, 2023

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

Coelacanth Jul 18, 2023

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.

gonzo0815 Jul 18, 2023

That’s a really great idea!

Phlogiston Jul 18, 2023

I too would like a ‘custom feed’ functionality.

Salix Jul 19, 2023

github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/818

Support for grouping communities / multi-communities · Issue #818 · LemmyNet/lemmy

Reddit has a very useful feature called a "Multireddit" (more recently "custom feed"). A multireddit is a subreddit that combines different subreddits into one (and you can choose a name, a descrip...

GitHub

FourPacketsOfPeanuts Jul 20, 2023

Isn’t that what reddit’s “multi Reddit” was all about?

Coelacanth Jul 20, 2023

Yes. It’s been discussed the Lemmy GitHub so it’s in the works, but that’s all I know.

EssentialCoffee Jul 20, 2023

I always hated multi-reddit because it never worked the way I wanted it to.

I wanted it to give me an r/all setup for a specific sets of subreddits. What it did was just give posts from every subreddit in the list, including ones that hadn’t had posts in months. It was just trash to try to use.

Delphia Jul 20, 2023

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.

Odusei Jul 18, 2023

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.

spaduf Jul 19, 2023

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.

Odusei Jul 19, 2023

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.

New Communities - Lemmy.World

A place to post new communities all over Lemmy for discovery and promotion. # Rules The rules for behavior are a straight carry over of Mastodon.World’s rules. You can click the link but we’ve reposted them here in brief, as a guideline. We will continue to use the Mastodon.World [https://mastodon.world/about] rules as the master list. Over all, be nice to each other and remember this isn’t a community built around debate. For the rules about formatting your posts, scroll down to number 2. 1. Follow the rules of Mastodon.world, which can be found here [https://mastodon.world/about]. >A. Provide an inclusive and supportive environment. This means if it isn’t rulebreaking and we can’t be supportive to them then we probably shouldn’t engage. >B. No illegal content. >C. Use content warnings where appropriate. This means mark your submissions NSFW if need be. >D. No uncivil behavior. This includes, but is not limited to: Name Calling; Bullying; Trolling; Disruptive Commenting; or Personal Criticisms. >E. No Harrassment. As an example in relation to Transgender people this includes, deadnaming, misgendering, and promotion of conversion therapy. Similarly Misogyny, Misandry, and Racism are also banned here. 2. Include a community or instance title and description in your post title. - A following example of this would be New Communities - A place to post new communities or instances all over Lemmy for discovery and promotion. 3. Follow the formatting. - The formatting as included below is important for people getting universal links across Lemmy as easily as possible. # Formatting Please include this following format in your post: [link text](/c/[email protected]) This provides a link that should work across instances, but in some cases it won’t You should also include either: [email protected] [/c/[email protected]] or instance.com/c/community [http://instance.com/c/community] # FAQ: Q: Why do I get a 404? A: At least one user in an instance needs to search for a community before it gets fetched. Searching for the community will bring it into the instance and it will fetch a few of the most recent posts without comments. If a user is subscribed to a community, then all of the future posts and interactions are now in-sync. Q: When I try to create a post, the circle just spins forever. Why is that? A: This is a current known issue with large communities. Sometimes it does get posted, but just continues spinning, but sometimes it doesn’t get posted and continues spinning. If it doesn’t actually get posted, the best thing to do is try later. However, only some people seem to be having this problem at the moment. Extra FAQ information [https://lemmy.world/comment/12095475] Image Attribution: Fahmi, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0], via Wikimedia Commons>>

CommunityLinkFixerBot Jul 19, 2023

Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected]

spaduf Jul 19, 2023

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.

glimse Jul 19, 2023

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

Odusei Jul 19, 2023

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.

glimse Jul 19, 2023

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

Odusei Jul 19, 2023

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.

glimse Jul 19, 2023

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?

Odusei Jul 19, 2023

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.

glimse Jul 19, 2023

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

Odusei Jul 19, 2023

I joined because I still want the same content without the asshole owner. I’m here for the different power structure, not because I hated Reddit’s content.

EssentialCoffee Jul 20, 2023

The goal is likely going to be different based on what community you’re in.

subway Jul 19, 2023

What if you make an alt account that blocks big prominent communities when sorting through /all so you can view the top posts from smaller communities?