cross-posted from: https://reddthat.com/post/52386265
Right now, big communities dominate the feed. I’m wondering what sort algorithm could level the field so niche or hobbyist communities have a fair chance to get seen.
There’s a good related post: Niche Communities won’t be able to reach their true potential until Lemmy adds a sort that takes engagement into account. It puts it well:
“If Lemmy is to truly start having active hobbyist communities instead of being 95% lefty US politics, Shitposts, and some tech stuff, it needs a sort that takes into account the user’s engagement.”
What do you think should be the default sort for a more balanced Lemmy?
Try “Scaled,” it is better.
Scaled with Subscribed, then liberally subscribe to any and all communities I think I might be interested in. Check the Scaled + All firehose once in a while and subscribe to new communities if anything new shows up.
I’ve just tried it out on “All” and basically the entire first page is filled with one user’s posts to !visualarts@lemmy.dbzer0.com :/
Hm
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/?dataType=Post&listingType=All&sort=Scaled
Yeah, maybe so. I think you may have to do it to “Subscribed” only, and then sometimes cut out one specific community or other that it is over-promoting. I mean, it’s doing what it’s supposed to do, promoting small communities, but I think sometimes it maybe gets carried away.
Maybe the size of the community should be determined based on posts per month instead of the number of active users
Imo that’s as much a problem of the sorting algorithm as it is with a single community blasting out too many posts at once without any consideration for how current frontends are unable to usefully integrate that into people’s feeds. A couple of years ago nanoUFO was being a bit (subjectively) overenthusiastic about posting - I counted and !games@sh.itjust.works had 40 posts at once from them and it made the first couple pages of my feed basically unusable for a while.
Scaled is also probably better suited for your subscribed feed rather than /All.