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:

  • stevecrox@kbin.social
    2·
    1 year ago

    Change to subscribed
    On KBin the default view is similar to /r/all this can be changed to limit your view to only magazines/communities you are subscribed to by going:

    • Select your account name in top right corner
    • Select ‘Settings’ from the account context menu
    • Select ‘Subscription’ from the ‘Homepage’ drop down
    • Select ‘Save’ on the settings page

    This will change your default URL to https://<insance url>/sub (e.g. https://kbin.social/sub). This will change your feed to the top/newest/hottest from your subscribed magazines/communities.

    Time Filter
    If you look at the KBin screen, you will notice a filter by time option. Look for the navigation bar with hottest/newest/etc… on it on that bar is a upwards arrow and 4 lines representing a triangle (its normally used as a sort symbol). That will let you set time limits similar to those mentioned in this post (e.g. 3 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours, 1 day, 1t (is 1 week).

    Microblogs
    Its also worth looking at the ‘microblogs’ feature under /sub as that will focus on mastodon messages/kbin microblogs with hashtags associated with your magazines/communities.

    You can ask KBin to subscribe to people you find through Mastodon, due to the rate changes various twitter users are migrating around. I find KBin a nicer way to read their content.