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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[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Isn't that the difference between "active" and "hot?"

One is just upvotes; the other is votes and comments.

I don't think it would help, to be honest. A dead community not being posted to still won't show up on your feed if you sort by engagement.

[–] FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 3 weeks ago

read my post, not just the title.

[–] secret300@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 3 weeks ago

I always sort by new comments and it works pretty well. I see new post and post from 8 months ago that someone commented on. I've found a couple niche communities this way

[–] LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 4 weeks 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 0 points 1 month ago

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

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