Sorting Type

On lemmy.world at the very least, posts are sorted by default to “Active”. Active will decay posts based on the popularity of its most recent comments. This keeps the most discussed topic on the front of the page, and they’ll stay there until people stop talking about it. This also makes it possible that a “dead” thread can get revived if enough people newly discover it & comment on it. This is a very valuable feature, but for us content junkies it may not be your desired default.

Switching to “Hot” will decay posts based only on their age & popularity (not their comment’s age & popularity). When filtered to “Hot”, you will see a lot newer, less-popular (but more current) content. The decay doesn’t seem to be tuned to how a lot of us may be used to - it’s more of a “Rising” than our typical “Hot” - but nevertheless it at least gives a constant stream of semi-popular new content.


Sorting Scope

On lemmy.world at the very least, posts are filtered by default to “Local”, which only contains communities created on lemmy.world.

If you switch your default to “All”, you will open up your content stream to everything within the fediverse. Warning: this does include NSFW content & communities (but if you are OK blanketly removing NSFW content, you can disable it in your settings)

If you are having trouble grasping the concept of “Local”, “All”, “Instances”, “Fediverse”, etc, if you have any experience playing an MMO, there’s an analogy that may help connect some of the dots;

  • Lemmy Federation = MMO Server Regions (a cluster of servers connected to each other)
  • Lemmy Instances = MMO Servers/Realms (a place where each account and its content is saved on the same physical hardware)
  • Lemmy Community = MMO Guild (a group of individuals with similar interests)

Searching on “All” is akin to playing an MMO with cross-realm/server features enabled.


Sources:

  • ribboo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Sorting by top during the last 6 hours is by far the best experience for getting “what’s hot”. It’s not as buggy as hot is, which show months old content.

  • Carlos de Grails@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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    1 year ago

    It doesn’t help that we have pinned posts from many communities hogging the top space in many sorting options, without a way to get rid of them.

    • TheGreenGolem@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      There should be a local (as in inside the community/magazine) pin and a global pin (which should be used if it really interests the whole instance).

      Maybe there is already an Issue or even PR to address this, but I’m too lazy to actually look it up on the LemmyNet github.

  • _MoveSwiftly@lemmy.worldM
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    1 year ago

    Hello there, and welcome to our community! I hope you like it in here.

    Could you please include some body text as to why should people know this, and how would that help them? It’s our second rule. Thank you :)

  • cc8@infosec.pub
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    1 year ago

    Hot seems broken though. I see lots of posts that are days/weeks old, posts with 1 upvote, posts 20 minutes old with 1 upvote and so on.

    • Wander@yiffit.net
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      1 year ago

      Yes, there is a bug. It’s better than it was before, but still needs some work.

  • MondaySunday21@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Even though I’m now subscribed to heaps of channels, my feed on ‘subscribed - all’ only seems to show me posts from the same couple of channels even though a couple of those channels are way less active then many others I have.

    Anyone have the same experience/tips - doesn’t matter whether I set to new or hot

  • ilikekeyboards@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Somebody tag a developer to make this a new registration tip before everyone just leaves the place because it’s “stale”

  • Strangian@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Funnily enough, I just switched to sorting by hot for this exact reason and found this post

  • laxe@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    I’m using Top Day when browsing All. This way, I don’t miss any of the fresh beany memes.

  • invicticide@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    I recently switched to sorting by New, which sounds insane coming from Reddit, but Lemmy is much smaller right now, and New is actually viable and interesting.

    I’m sure with more growth that will change, but it’s definitely kept my feed fresher and more interesting than either Active or Hot.

    (This does of course assume that you’re subscribed to a reasonable number of communities you’re interested in.)