What I mean is someone sets up a new community, blasts it with a bunch of content to get things started, or sets up a new community bot that makes 20 posts and every other post in my feed is that community. Usually with 1 or 2 votes each and no comments. No matter what way I sort I see this.
I have zero issues with people getting things going within their space, and it’s not a knock against new communities that don’t want to be empty when people stumble across them.
It’s a complaint about the algorithm flooding my feed with so much content from one place that I’ve unfortunately blocked communities over this that I otherwise would have continued to run across and maybe engaged with in the future.
I’m not sure if your first X results should all be unique communities or putting some sort of engagement threshold in place before they show up in the top X posts or something. I don’t really have a perfect answer but to me this is a flaw in the system.
It’s my understanding that there is no algorithm. View only your subscriptions, only communities on your local instance, or the entire fediverse. Sort them however you want. Mix it up to find what makes you happy.
All that said, I personally would like to avoid seeing any account less than, say a week old. Maybe a filter coded into the interface would work.
I understood OP to be pining for an obscured algorithm that surfaces “Interesting” content. I have zero desire for any of that nonsense here. It’s part of the reason that I’m adamantly opposed to federation with Facebook (when they finally figure out how to do it).
It’s a complaint about the algorithm flooding my feed
Or rather, the absence of one.
I guess in a way you're showcasing where algorithmic sorting/grouping, when not used just to promote ads and increase profitability, can have a positive impact. Because they could for example be used to temporarily suppress exactly what you mean, and require a community to stay "active" for longer than a brief flare-up to start spreading wider and wider.
That being said, I find the lack of such stuff refreshing. You after all select whether you want to see "All" content, and even the sort mechanism.
It’s a complaint about the algorithm flooding my feed with so much content from one place that I’ve unfortunately blocked communities over this that I otherwise would have continued to run across and maybe engaged with in the future.
A neat feature could be the ability to snooze communities. I feel like that could help a bit with what might be considered spam (or generally temporary situations you can't be bothered with).
I've been using the 'Top 6 hour' sort, and it pretty much avoids most of those posts as they have no activity. Blocking the bot accounts that still show up is then pretty easy.
It happens to auto post everywhere just after I finish work, makes using lemmy basically impossible for a couple hours... entire feed is filled with 1 upvote 0 comment bot posts
That bot is one of the few users I've had to block. I'm happy to sift through 'organic' posts that don't interest me, but when it's just reposting Reddit posts and losing the benefit of the discussion under that post, it kinda sucks
I remember when reddit had to implement something similar leading up to the 2016 election, because the entire front page was spam from "the donald* or a few vocal left-wing subs, and it was putting everyone off.
Even a limit of posts per community would be great. 2-3 from each community max in the first 100 would even be awesome. It would also force a lot of lesser known communities into peoples top posts and help growth in them.
I agree. The turnover of the front page already seems configured to be rapid, so during the less active times of the day, this problem with flooding happens more.
The "New Comments" sort is actually supposed to be like old school forums, where a new post would be at the top and then each comment would "bump" the post to the top again. It works the exact same way. Although a way to sort by "New Comments" with at least 1 comment would be an interesting option, just need better names for these things lol. But then again if everyone uses that then who will be the first one to comment on any post?
a new post would be at the top and then each comment would “bump” the post to the top again.
That might be a fitting description of the current behaviour, yes. But the doc you linked only mentions the last part. It does not specify wether new posts with no comments are sorted top or bottom. I expected it to sort them bottom, since a post with no comments has no "New Comments".
if everyone uses that then who will be the first one to comment on any post?
Yes, but not everyone uses that. I switch between different sorting types. Sometimes I am the first to comment.