There’s no algorithm here*, so use the different sorting options (for both posts and comments), as well as setting your favourite as default once you see what works for you.
* the different sort options are of course algorithms, but I mean there’s no automatic, manipulative system like YouTube’s “The Algorithm”, Facebook, TikTok, etc.
Voting doesn’t tune your algorithm, so I’d say only use downvoting for things that are low quality, trolling, in the wrong sub, duplicate posts, etc. Your votes aren’t private, by the way - although Lemmy itself doesn’t display voters’ names, that info is in every server’s database, and some other software in the Fediverse does show them.
There are quite a few apps available, I like Voyager on Android and I stick to the default website on my computer.
Out of curiosity, which sorting option do you prefer and why? I seem to use Hot a lot, but sometimes I switch to Active, honestly not sure what the difference is.
Active (default): Calculates a rank based on the score and time of the latest comment, with decay over time
Hot: Like active, but uses time when the post was published
My default is set to
Scaled: Like hot, but gives a boost to less active communities
This is the newest sorting option, I think, and it helps me not miss posts from the smaller comms - particularly ones where people are asking a question and there’s been no engagement. Ideally I’d like to have Mastodon-style lists so I could have “quiet comms” or something and check them all every so often.
I will switch to new or top 6h/24h if I’ve been on recently and just want to see what’s fresh. Top all time or 1y if I’m looking at new-to-me comms so I can see what type of thing to expect from it.
Yeah, I like Scaled, I’ve switched to using that now. Thanks!
And yeah with Active I’ve noticed it seems to put the same posts at the top if I check it multiple times a day (I’ll often pop in for 20-30 minutes while waiting on something else or whatever), so hopefully Scaled does a better job about mixing that up.
As an aside: I am subbed to several political/news communities and I keep seeing the same post cross-posted to all 3 of them back to back, do you know of a way to avoid that? I want the other content from those subs but seeing the same ‘human fire hose of shit spews some more shit’ article 2-3 times in a row is annoying.
The duplicate content thing is kinda impossible to solve perfectly. Some people will tell you it’s a feature, and it can be interesting to see the different instances’ comment sections (especially after moderation), but yeah it can be annoying to have your feed dominated by a few stories.
The default web front-end will merge crossposts, but won’t if they’re multiple posts to the same URL. I think some of the apps do have that deduplication as a feature, but I couldn’t tell you which.
I remember the same problem from my Reddit days, but there wasn’t generally so many similar, overlapping communities.
You know, I just realized I don’t get it (or at least not as much) with Voyager on mobile, and I didn’t even think about it. I’m using the Alexandrite UI on desktop and it’s bad about it, I haven’t found any options for it in the settings or anything. I noticed it a few times on reddit, but I was subbed to so many communities and they were so much more active that it almost never happened. Oh well.
There’s no algorithm here*, so use the different sorting options (for both posts and comments), as well as setting your favourite as default once you see what works for you.
* the different sort options are of course algorithms, but I mean there’s no automatic, manipulative system like YouTube’s “The Algorithm”, Facebook, TikTok, etc.
Voting doesn’t tune your algorithm, so I’d say only use downvoting for things that are low quality, trolling, in the wrong sub, duplicate posts, etc. Your votes aren’t private, by the way - although Lemmy itself doesn’t display voters’ names, that info is in every server’s database, and some other software in the Fediverse does show them.
There are quite a few apps available, I like Voyager on Android and I stick to the default website on my computer.
Out of curiosity, which sorting option do you prefer and why? I seem to use Hot a lot, but sometimes I switch to Active, honestly not sure what the difference is.
From the Lemmy docs:
My default is set to
This is the newest sorting option, I think, and it helps me not miss posts from the smaller comms - particularly ones where people are asking a question and there’s been no engagement. Ideally I’d like to have Mastodon-style lists so I could have “quiet comms” or something and check them all every so often.
I will switch to new or top 6h/24h if I’ve been on recently and just want to see what’s fresh. Top all time or 1y if I’m looking at new-to-me comms so I can see what type of thing to expect from it.
Yeah, I like Scaled, I’ve switched to using that now. Thanks!
And yeah with Active I’ve noticed it seems to put the same posts at the top if I check it multiple times a day (I’ll often pop in for 20-30 minutes while waiting on something else or whatever), so hopefully Scaled does a better job about mixing that up.
As an aside: I am subbed to several political/news communities and I keep seeing the same post cross-posted to all 3 of them back to back, do you know of a way to avoid that? I want the other content from those subs but seeing the same ‘human fire hose of shit spews some more shit’ article 2-3 times in a row is annoying.
The duplicate content thing is kinda impossible to solve perfectly. Some people will tell you it’s a feature, and it can be interesting to see the different instances’ comment sections (especially after moderation), but yeah it can be annoying to have your feed dominated by a few stories.
The default web front-end will merge crossposts, but won’t if they’re multiple posts to the same URL. I think some of the apps do have that deduplication as a feature, but I couldn’t tell you which.
I remember the same problem from my Reddit days, but there wasn’t generally so many similar, overlapping communities.
You know, I just realized I don’t get it (or at least not as much) with Voyager on mobile, and I didn’t even think about it. I’m using the Alexandrite UI on desktop and it’s bad about it, I haven’t found any options for it in the settings or anything. I noticed it a few times on reddit, but I was subbed to so many communities and they were so much more active that it almost never happened. Oh well.