Surfacing Content from Smaller Communities on Lemmy
Before the scaled sort was introduced, the hope was that it would provide a solution to surface posts from smaller communities, without being overrun by memes and political posts from larger communities. However, the scaled sort has been ineffective so far, as most posts appear with a single vote, making it practically the same as the "New" sort.
The developers have closed all issues related to the scaled sort, even though it fails to address the issues raised in several discussions:
Although I've blocked the largest communities, I still want to see some of that content occasionally.
Do you have any ideas or suggestions on how Lemmy could better surface content from smaller communities?
Edit:
Potential Solutions
Several potential solutions were discussed:
Tagging System and Custom Feeds
Implementing a tagging system could allow users to create custom feeds by subscribing and blocking specific tags across communities. This could surface niche content by filtering for relevant tags. An incentive system like leaderboards could encourage accurate user tagging.
Community Grouping
Similar to Reddit's "Multireddits", allowing users to group multiple smaller communities together into a single custom feed could boost visibility for those niche communities when browsing that grouped feed.
API for Client-Side Sorting
Providing an API endpoint that shares metadata for recent posts like post ID, post votes, and comments would allow third-party clients and plugins to experiment with custom sorting algorithms on the front-end tailored to user preferences.
"Unanswered" View
Having a view that surfaces posts with little or no engagement yet, specifically from smaller communities, could help discover underrepresented niche topics that may need more attention.
Server Plugin Architecture
If sorting algorithms must be implemented server-side for performance, having a plugin architecture where different instance owners can test out new sorting implementations and formulas could allow faster iteration.
Ideally, a combination of tagging, custom feeds, and improving sort algorithms to factor in community size could provide a multifaceted approach to better surface content from niche communities on Lemmy. Encouraging open discussion around desirable features is valuable to guide development efforts when resources do become available.
It certainly doesn't help that Lemmy had and still has absolutely no sensible way to actually surface niche communities to its subscribers. Unlike Reddit, it doesn't weigh posts by their relative popularity within the community but only by total popularity/popularity within the instance. There's also zero form of community grouping (like Reddit's multireddits) - all of which effectively eliminates all niche communities from any sensible main view mode and floods those with shitty memes and even shittier politics only. This pretty much suffocated the initially enthusiastic niche tech communities I had subscribed to. They stood no chance to thrive and their untimely death was inevitable.
There are some very tepid attempts to remedy this in upcoming Lemmy builds, but I fear it's too little too late.
I fear that Lemmy was simply nowhere near mature enough when it mattered and it has been slowly bleeding users and content ever since. I sincerely hope I'm wrong, though.
Reddit isn't going to magically get better though. Reddit is dying and will only get worse with time, continually shedding users as time goes by.
So making noise about lemmy, and making suggestions on how to prove it is a good thing, because unlike reddit, lemmy might actually get better with time.
Reddit was like this when it started. I was there when Dig was a competitor. It took a decade of constant posts by people who really loved their communities to really take off. And reddit, when it started, didnt have subreddits, it was closer to hackernews.
Not saying your arguments are wrong per-say. But it will take some time to get started. The good news is federation means different instances will come and go but the protocol means we dont need to stay on any one kind of server. Kinda like email. I use mastodon to talk with peertube creators and use lemmy to talk to other lemmy instances all the time.
multireddits
I think you are spot on here. We need this kind of functionality in order to keep up with instances. For example, lemmy.world/technology and lemmy.ml/technology, etc... could all bu there own multicommunities. Something like /mc/technologies or something saved on a per user perspective. It would transform lemmy overnight I think. multicommunities would make those niche topics have a great deal more action.
If your issue is that you are only seeing popular stuff from "lowest-common-denominator" communities, then maybe stop browsing by all and only subscribe to the communities you are interested in?
stop browsing by all and only subscribe to the communities you are interested in
The issue with this is that subscribing to a large community results in seeing predominantly content from that community, overshadowing the smaller communities. All the communities I subscribe to would have to be about the same size.
I see. I think this technical issue doesn't bother me as much as the fact that the communities I'd like to have are small in the first place. The Reddit mirror bots were solving this for me, but apparently I lost this battle.
Out of curiosity: how many communities would you have in your "subscribed" list?