this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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Yeah, still we lack variety because our algo doesn't do a good job of promoting smaller communities. I'd like a lot more niche subs get more popular rather then our few dozen or so that have gotten big, which is still a good thing don't get me wrong.
https://feddit.nl/c/trendingcommunities is pretty useful!
That I agree with, the other thing that kills me is multiple communities of the same topic just in different servers.
Same here, I think I'll open a thread about that in the coming days
@regalia
> our algo doesn’t do a good job of promoting smaller communities
Lemmy has an algo for that?
@SupraMario
No, the algo for active/hot favor large communties, so smaller ones tend not to show up on the front page. It should be tweaked so smaller ones pop up more often. Reddit solved that somehow, I don't know what they changed though.
@regalia
> the algo for active/hot favor large communties, so smaller ones tend not to show up on the front page
I presume it's the same as what determines which posts appear on the front page of a Mastodon server; chronological order of posts. That would favour the larger communities, since people post there more often.
The other limiting factor, I presume, is a Lemmy server only knows about the communities its accounts are members of. Larger communities will have members on more servers.
Huh? Are you replying from Mastodon right now lol
@regalia
> Are you replying from Mastodon right now
Yes. Here's the post you just replied to, on the public-facing web page of the Mastodon server I use:
https://mastodon.nzoss.nz/@strypey/110943135468924731
I can tell lol, especially when you mentioned Mastodon's recent post first timeline. Lemmy is very, very different. I recommend actually looking at what it looks like on the site, it's extremely different then how it looks on mastodon.
@regalia
> I recommend actually looking at what it looks like on the site, it’s extremely different then how it looks on mastodon
Yes, I'm familiar. I've been following Lemmy development for several years, as part of research for fediverse.party. That's the background to my comments about the algorithm determining what appears on a Lemmy front page.
If you're proposing that there's a more complicated algorithm at work, what do you think it is?
I believe "active" sort has comments bump put an entire post, which has many threads inside it. Not sure if time factors into it. The "hot" algo is slightly more complicated that factors in votes and then time will heavily decrease it from appearing on the front page. Both algos punish smaller communities as they're not going to be as active or have nearly as much votes.