I've noticed that there are a few communities that tend to dominate when viewing all. Some days it gets to where looking at all isn't very different than just looking at Memes@lemmy.ml or 196@lemmy.blahaj.zone.

Before someone says "you can just block communities you don't want to see," it's not that I never want to see them, it's that I want to be able to have a view that shows me what is new and popular in a wide variety of communities. I appreciate seeing a few good memes in my feed. The problem is when that's all I see. Changing the sort from active to hot or top x days doesn't have much effect on which communities dominate, so that isn't the solution either.

"You can just subscribe to communities you like". True, but that has the effect of narrowing what I see. I'd like a view that showed me new things I never thought to subscribe to.

Lemmy devs - if you are reading this - it would be nice to have a feed that limited the number of posts showing up from any particular community. It could be a simple cutoff of 2 or 3 posts, or maybe some sort of weighting function to cause additional posts from the same community to appear lower in the sort order for that feed.

I'd love to hear what devs and other users think about this.

Edit: To everyone saying "just sort be new" - yes, that has its uses, but it only solves part of the problem. I'd like a feed that shows me what is new and popular, but from more than just one or two communities.

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[–] Rottcodd@kbin.social 27 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Note that this is one of the advantages of having an account on a smaller and/or more focused instance or having multiple accounts.

All "Alls" are not the same. Actually, the "All" displayed on a given instance is everything local to that instance and everything from other instances to which someone on that instance has subscribed. So if nobody from that instance has subscribed to a particular community on another instance, then for all intents and purposes, it just doesn't exist. Even on "All".

Granted that it's somewhat unlikely for an instance to not have someone somewhere along the way subscribe to some notably popular community, it is possible, and the smaller and more focused the instance is, the more likely it is.

[–] WndyLady@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for teaching me. I can see that causing challenges down the road.

For example, I'm always on the lookout for all things quilting. If someone names their quilting community "Fabric Hordes" (not impossible, just look at phenomenon like r/animetitties) it wouldn't come up in my explicit searches, and is very unlikely to be sought out or found by others in my instance.

[–] Rottcodd@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Right, but there are lots of ways around that.

There's already been a fair amount of demand for some method to group communities by interest, so it's essentially guaranteed that somebody is going to provide some way to do that, and likely multiple somebodies are going to figure out multiple ways.

[–] Knightfall@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So, would it be wise and helpful for a mod or bot per instance to subscribe to as many communities as possible to help the instance's feed?

[–] Rottcodd@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hell no.

How does that "help" their feed? What possible benefit could there be in using a bot to subscribe willy-nilly to every community out there, no matter how shitty it is?

I mean - if some instance owner wants to do that, that's their choice, and I guess there are people out there who would like the resulting instance filled to the brim with every bit of garbage that exists anywhere in the fediverse, so it's safe to assume that somebody will do it sooner or later. Personally, I think the idea is repulsive though.

Maybe I wasn't clear enough in that other post - I think that the fact that each instance has a different "All" depending on what the members there have subscribed to is a good thing. It means that different instances have different feels, and over time, as they get more established, that's going to be even more the case.

So for instance, a notably tech-oriented instance is going to end up displaying pretty much every tech-oriented community on the fediverse on its All because somebody on the instance will have subscribed to it, pretty much no matter what it is, AND at the same time, all of the stuff nobody's interested in just won't be there at all, because nobody bothered to subscribe to it in the first place.

Granted that that's not going to appeal to people who want to be flooded with every bit of garbage on the entire fediverse when they click All, but they can just go away and sign up with some other instance that gives them what they want. Which I'm sure is exactly what the people who sought out a tech-oriented instance in the first place would prefer anyway.

[–] Knightfall@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How does that "help" their feed? What possible benefit could there be in using a bot to subscribe willy-nilly to every community out there, no matter how shitty it is?

I don't know... You made it sound like the only way for me to have more communities show up in my All feed on lemmy.ca would be if a volunteer on lemmy.ca, be it a bot or mod, subscribed to all the communities they could find. Hense seeing top posts from All communities. And I only meant for a bot or mod to just subscribe. Not to repost everything.

If that isn't how it works, sorry. It is why I asked if that would work or not.

[–] Rottcodd@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

You don't need a mod or a bot to do it for you. You can go find communities on other instances and subscribe to them, and that all by itself gets them added to the All feed on your home instance.

Or you could just register an account on a different instance that slready has more stuff on it, like lemmy.world.

[–] travysh@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Ah. I had noticed that lemmy.world's all seemed different than lemm.ee's, which in turn was also different than kbin. That's good to know