No matter which sort you use (except for new), content is recommended to you by activity. Depending on the sort (active, hot, top) it uses a slightly different mixture of votes/comments/time since post to determine the order.

The only exception is scaled, which boosts a little bit midsized communities, but still doesn’t manage to improve visibility of niche ones.

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.

For example, if I upvote / comment often in a community, there should be an option to have posts from the community be boosted in my feed, even if it’s a tiny community.

Let’s say I’m subscribed to !world@lemmy.world and !news@lemmy.world because I want to occasionally see news. However, I’m also subscribed to a couple hundred other communities, some of them who don’t manage to get more than a couple upvotes on their biggest posts. And whenever I see them I’m replying/upvoting because I’m passionate about that topic.

My feed shouldn’t be 95% c/news and c/world because those are the most upvoted and commented. I shouldn’t have to scroll down hundreds of posts to find “big” posts in small communities I interact with at any opportunity I get.

That’s why I think it would be beneficial to lemmy if the sort/algorithm took into account your engagement in a way.

It doesn’t have to be complicated, you can have a single number “engagement score” for every community calculated with a basic formula, and that number is used as a boost to the community.

I’m aware that there are some examples of successful niche communities on lemmy. But that’s mainly because either a significant chunk of the lemmy userbase is into that niche (let’s face it the lemmy community is not a representative sample of the world population, we tend to be very similar people), or because the posts on it are simplified image/video type posts which appeal to people who don’t know much about the subject.

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[–] PumpkinDrama@reddthat.com 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (12 children)

Although there were some proposed solutions for this issue, when scaled sort was implemented, @nutomic@lemmy.ml closed all related issues, even when they weren't being solved by scaled sort. So, it's clear that since there are no longer any open issues about this, no one is going to care about solving it. Therefore, it seems like the only option is to accept this fact and learn to cope with it. At this point, I've come to terms with the fact that Lemmy is mainly a platform for shitposts, while Reddit is for everything else. When I look at the feed, I mostly see memes, US politics, and some tech.

Custom feeds may not be the most efficient solution due to scalability concerns. However, an alternative approach could be to make the metadata about the posts (votes, comments, etc) available through an API call. This would enable users to develop their own algorithms for content discovery and potentially create a more personalized experience. Users could then implement, share and install these algorithms using tools like Tampermonkey or other userscript managers.

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[–] sweetviolentblush@sh.itjust.works 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I'd love custom feeds, it was the one of the things I really liked about reddit

[–] P4ulin_Kbana@lemmy.eco.br 2 points 5 days ago

Nice profile picture!

[–] realcaseyrollins@thelemmy.club 4 points 5 days ago

I'd rather be allowed to reverse sort on any of the algorithms. It would show content with less engagement and probably and up pushing up content from those niche communities you speak of.

[–] LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (4 children)

Nah. Algorithms, especially personalized as a way of sorting a feed are just a shite idea. Maybe one of the iOS apps will add something like that but if anything Lemmy being different is a selling point. I got two friends on fedi by telling them that "it has no algorithm" which is a simplification of course but you get the gist. It also really hits home that this is not a corporate product.

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[–] Binette@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 days ago

I usually use the scaled sort in order to find niche communities

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