I feel like posts need to age quicker

There is currently a bug in Lemmy 0.17.4 that causes post rank calculation to stop shortly after the server is restarted. It seems like lemmy.world is affected as well.

You can track this bug here: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3076

I pinged Ruud about this, he can restart the server for now for the ranks to refresh, but I am also working on investigating and fixing the root cause.

Well, that explains it. Hopefully it's fixed soon, thanks!

Yeah, the “active” sort also seems broken. I change to top with a day time period or hot. Works much better.

Active works a lot like old forum posts. New comments makes a post more active. Hot is similar to Reddit, though posts do tend to stick at the top for longer than they should.

Edit: Turns out Hot is bugged and stops updating, requiring server restarts. Github issue tracking it.
- this explains a lot. on Hot and on Active I see posts with 0 interaction (basically sorting by new). on Top I just see old posts :(
Yeah solution has been to sort by daily top. Not ideal but gets the job done. Really unfortunate timing to have a bug like that with the hot sorting.
- daily top means you get the same thing for like 24 hours though

One million percent. It’s enough to trigger the instinctual “open Reddit” motion

You'll get over that soon when the apps stop working.
Mental health professional has entered the chat
- Psh. This shit ain't addictive. I've been doing it for years and I'm not addicted yet.

I'm finding it's much better to sort posts by "hot" than "Active", it seems to more heavily prioritise newer posts. I'd really like to make this my default but I can't work out how to do it - does anyone know if that's possible?

There's a toggle towards the bottom of your profile settings I believe... Here it is in Jerboa
- Ah, I'd been staring at that page for ages and missed it. Thank you.
- Hey there! Just wondering, is there a way to browse instances and communities outside of your home instance in jerboa? The search function is wonky. Not expecting you to have the answer but I'm hoping a user who happens to know might see this and point me in the right direction
- Thank you, I was getting annoyed that those kept reverting to the defaults but didn't think to look in profile settings.

my go to method on reddit is sorting by subscribed and top day. this way if I've seen everything already I know I've probably spent too much time scrolling and should check out individual communities if I'm trying to kill more time.

I personally view this as a good thing for me (if unintended) - I've realised that I spent waaaay too much time on reddit, so I'm trying to cut down on my use of the platform.

I like lemmy, but I don't want to spend all my time here either. The relatively low volume here makes me realise I should be doing other things.

That said, you can always join more communities - or better yet, contribute to them! Start your own posts!

I do but even on my subscribed front page all the posts are mostly ones I've already seen. It would be kind of cool if we could customize our own front page to control the age of posts that show up I feel

I'll also add that not everyone feels that way and wats to give up their addiction and just want to see fresh content each day.
- Other than playing with your default sort order, there's also a setting to hide posts you've already read. It's in your profile settings somewhere. I tried it and just found it confusing as heck but you might find it useful!
- oh yeah, that's a valid opinion too. It works for me, but I know it doesn't work for everyone.
  
  My other point still stands though - you're free to contribute yourself! :)

You might wanna read up on the algorithm Lemmy uses. Specifically this part:

Active uses the post votes, and latest comment time (limited to two days).
Hot uses the post votes, and the post published time.

If you're sorting by Active, that means those posts you're seeing are pretty, well, active even if they're a couple days old.

Thanks for sharing that, that's a handy thing to know

I turned off the show read in the account settings. I don't see the articles I'm reading.

My issue with it is it is VERY literal. So like you can't even see the posts in your post history because you've read them. So needs some work still lol.
- Yep. On plebbit you were able to actively hide certain posts. I would like posts to remain available on communities I car about.
Not ideal for me. I like to keep tabs on the conversation on post. I will often see a post that is making its way up the page with a few comments and will check back in as I am browsing when it has hundreds.
- Sounds like good use for bookmarking/saving posts.
- I just realized I never did this on reddit because I would check the post, reply to some comments and move on and never go back lol! I don't think I want to do that here.
- My reddit goto was to mark as read as I scroll and then Boost had a "Clear all read" button I could press. It would only clear until I refreshed my feed then they would show up again until I hit the button again. It felt like a good balance.
- That could work somewhat if it was an option on the actual feed next to subscribed/local/all and sort type.
Bingo this has made it tolerable for me. But I miss the swipe to hide feature from Reddit is Fun. That way I don't actually have to click on the post if I don't care about it.
This is the way.

I used to hide on upvote / downvote, would be cool if Lemmy adds this as an option too

That is a feature available in your settings.
- Awesome! Where in settings is it? I can only see “hide on read”
I really miss the ctrl-enter to submit.

Are you sorting by Active? That's why. Use hot, or something.

I sort by hot and have seen the same posts 3 days in a row. I've actually had to completely switch to new to see anything outside of the same posts I've seen for days.
- Same.
- I sort by "Top Day" most of the time. Seems to give the best results to me
Lemmy needs to make Hot the default. It’s a better experience for new users.
- Or better, Lemmy will let you choose the default, or remember your choices. Likewise, I typically browse all servers, annoying to have to switch from local to all each time.

Each client would have to implement it on it own. But marking posts as viewed when scrolled past and hiding them from showing up in the feed again would be a great optional feature

Right now you could turn off read post in settings and browse through All communities with sorting by Hot.

I am a bit split. I too find it a bit annoying to scroll past 80% of the posts. On the other hand, sometimes I see that there are new comments (which lemmy shows) under a post about an interesting topic.

Yeah this is why I haven't set that option that hides visited links...
I think the UI, instead of just bringing the posts up without explanation, should show you how many new comments the post received. It would be great for keeping tabs on a discussion, too.

The Reddit Enhancement Suite stores a cookie that remembers the number of comments when you visited a post. It's a killer feature.

A more modern UI example:
- I would not have understood the meaning of the +4 had i not seen the old UI first.

It seems like a lot of people complain about not seeing content but then don't contribute any content themselves. Like, posts are old because there's little new content, so maybe everyone can help contribute to communities. Content doesn't miraculously appear.

There's plenty of new content if you sort by new. This isn't a content issue; it's a bug. But go off I guess.
This. Almost all posts or comments are about "there is no new posts". The fediverse must grown before one can view different posts in any lemmy instance. We need to create content, share our thoughts, pics, a link to some news or articles, or just ask a question.
Like, posts are old because there’s little new content

Yeah, but you could be underestimating the effect of the Active sorting bumping old posts, which leads to a few posts threads rising over and over. Perhaps there's more eagerness to make new threads than you can see, because most of those new threads don't spark the fire of discussion and get quickly buried.

Active sorting is more like 4chan, Hot sorting is like Reddit or HN.

Hot and active feeds are currently broken for a lot of big instances. It should be fixed in the next Lemmy server version. For now use New or New Comments. Growing pains of being such new software and such a huge, sudden adoption.

I really don't mind the growing pains .... enjoy what we have now ... there might come a time in ten years when we'll look back on today as the best of this new social media.
- I don't mind it either, was just seeing people ask this question everywhere so trying to inform people

I've started sorting by new which has worked out pretty well, I was noticing the same thing though sorting by active/hot - lots of 3 day old threads. Alternatively I'd love to be able to hide read posts in Jerboa.

You can deselect "show read" in your profile settings.
- Does this prevent them from appearing when there are new comments too?
I think that hiding readed posts on the front page is a nice idea.

I'll agree with this. I'm hoping this is just a growing pain; considering the large updates that seem to be happening to lemmy's backend recently, I hope this will be addressed sometime soon.

Didn't Randall Munroe design the ranking system for big R? Maybe he's got some free time later?

No, just the best style sorting method. Maybe it would be a useful addition to the options?

I was thinking the same thing. I've been using the filters to go to New and Hot and other things but when someone comes to the front page they shouldn't keep seeing the same posts for many hours or even days. I remember years ago on Reddit they altered the algorithm so that newer posts would show up more frequently on the front page and it was a massive improvement.

What I do is that I usually have my "frontpage" on subscribed-new. This way there is often new content that I find interesting. If I still want more, I check on "local" or "all" also on new and then I can enjoy standing under the waterfall of content. It's fun going about it this way.

Apparently in the algorithm time is a multiplier that increases the "gravity" but when the first post everyone saw here a few days ago has 1000 upvotes and everything else has 20-30~ even with the multiplier it stays on top. Those posts were an exception to the normal traffic that beat the algorithm. Maybe if the algorithm was based off of like "if x% above the average post karma for that instance then it gets a bigger time multiplier to increase its gravity over time"

But I think those posts getting upvoted hard-core beat the algorithm and it's going to take forever for them to fall.

In the ios app ( mlem) it defaults to top, so always odler stuff

Yep just logged in and the top 10 posts are all 3 days old. Yeah this migration from reddit is not working for me yet. I'll keep trying.

I actually get the most utility out of new comments but in my dreams I'd like to see separate drop downs for timespan and criteria. The sort I'm really craving is "most comments" "past day" but I think pretty much every combination would be useful and interesting. They could even have options referring to different time dropoff curves. Then the traditional past day, past week, etc would effectively be flat.

I usually sort by new on my subscribed communities if I see that happens, because normally there are some new posts when I came back to check Lemmy. It seems that if I let it sort by Active or Popular, there are a lot of posts that I've already seen that they still have activity.

But if those posts get new comments, it isn't so bad. I dislike how many websites age stuff too fast.

The only reason people are commenting so much on posts is due to how long they stay on the front page. 24 hours is plenty of time for a complete discussion. I agree that reddit aged stuff a bit to fast but I suppose they had to due to the large volume of content being posted.
- 24 hours seems quite short to me

What you want is sorting by new, in "subscribed" or even "all"

New + subscribes works fine yes. But won't you miss out new comments in popular posts that are a bit older with that option? If you are subscribed to lots of communities, the first few pages already are starting to get filled with new posts in a few hours. It is probably hard to do this well for everyone.
No I don't as I don't want to see all content I just want to see the good stuff, which is why I feel like the posts should age out after 24 hours so that when I get on lemmy the next day I have new quality content to view.
- You could sort by "top day", at least then you won't see older posts.

This might be needed, yes. I currently just sort by new, but that will probably lead to missing out on the actually popular topics when even more people start joining Lemmy.

I change the setting on my home feed into subscribe + new comment. Works well for me. All hot posts still takes chunk of first 10 on my homefeed, but really new post is not that far down the line...