Right now, big communities dominate the feed. I’m wondering what sort algorithm could level the field so niche or hobbyist communities have a fair chance to get seen.

There’s a good related post: Niche Communities won't be able to reach their true potential until Lemmy adds a sort that takes engagement into account. It puts it well:

“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.”

What do you think should be the default sort for a more balanced Lemmy?

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[–] antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

I've just tried it out on "All" and basically the entire first page is filled with one user's posts to !visualarts@lemmy.dbzer0.com :/

[–] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 10 points 5 days ago (1 children)

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/?dataType=Post&listingType=All&sort=Scaled

Yeah, maybe so. I think you may have to do it to "Subscribed" only, and then sometimes cut out one specific community or other that it is over-promoting. I mean, it's doing what it's supposed to do, promoting small communities, but I think sometimes it maybe gets carried away.

[–] Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com 11 points 5 days ago

Maybe the size of the community should be determined based on posts per month instead of the number of active users

[–] MHLoppy@fedia.io 6 points 5 days ago

Imo that's as much a problem of the sorting algorithm as it is with a single community blasting out too many posts at once without any consideration for how current frontends are unable to usefully integrate that into people's feeds. A couple of years ago nanoUFO was being a bit (subjectively) overenthusiastic about posting - I counted and !games@sh.itjust.works had 40 posts at once from them and it made the first couple pages of my feed basically unusable for a while.

Scaled is also probably better suited for your subscribed feed rather than /All.