23h ago

Why Isn't the "All" Feed Different for Each Instance?

I've noticed that the "All" feed on Lemmy is pretty much the same across all instances, showing posts from every instance regardless of the specific focus or community vibe of the instance you're on. This seems like a missed opportunity to make the experience more tailored and engaging for each instance's unique audience.

For example, if there were an instance dedicated to literature lovers, wouldn't it make sense for the "All" feed on that instance to prioritize content that's more relevant to people who enjoy books, poetry, and writing? Instead of being a global feed that shows everything from memes to tech news, it could reflect the interests and values of the instance's community.

I feel like making the "All" feed more tailored to each instance would not only improve user experience but also strengthen the sense of community within each instance. What do you think? Would love to hear everyone's thoughts!

41 comments

The problem I see with this idea is that I have no idea who most people are on "my" instance or what sort of content they're interested in. Even for a topic based instance like https://startrek.website/, outside of Star Trek, what are the chances that the interests of the members align?
The Lemmy developers were working on making user defined custom feeds. If that ever get implemented, I'd certainly give many ideas a try. But the Lemmy devs don't have any new feed options on their priority list and I doubt they will anytime soon.
The main dev (only dev?) of piefed seems much more likely to implement new ideas. For example, I had mentioned that only botes from a community's subscribers should be counted on posts to said community by default with the owner of the community given an option to count all votes. It was implemented within days.

All is meant to be everything, local exists for what you are talking about.

Seems like an opportunity to lose users. The whole instance thing is already kinda confusing for new people (source: just joined yesterday), but making every instance only connect to a select few instances would mean having to make an account on multiple different instances if you wanted to see a disparate selection of content. As much as I enjoy debating politics and religion I wouldn't join a server that only showed those communities because I also like videos of huskies being sassy, battletech memes, etc.

All fetches content from every* instance that your instance knows about. In my opinion, making it different per instance is a horrible idea, because it would mean that some content may or may not be visible from a particuoar instance, and I'd have to keep checking different instances. Not to mention this would be confusing for people new to Lemmy (e.g. "why does this instance's All look different from that one's? I thought instances didn't matter?")
*except defederated instances, of course.
edit: So, thanks to this comment, I understood what you're requesting, and it does seem like an interesting idea. However, rather than a seperate feed, this should just be a sort option.

Because "All" is everything, from every instance? You can already do what you want with "Local."
- Its only everything from other instances and communities that the current instance subscribes to. It doesn't subscribe to the full pipe of everything.
  What's likely happening is people in aggregate generally subscribe to the most popular communities and those communities have the most upvoted posts.
  
  Technically true, but since this tool got widely adopted it does mean pretty much a full pipe of everything: https://lemmy-federate.com/instances

"All" is all content on the fediverse, across all instances with which your home instance is federated. It will be similar for all instances, because most are federated with the big instances and those tend to have more posts and interaction.
If you only want to see the feed of communities on your local instance, you can just browse your "Local" feed.
- Sir, this a Wendys. Frostys are no longer 99 cents either. Unless you ean that teenie tiny trial size.
- I'm not referring to the amount of content but how it is curated. If it showed the content sorted by votes from the local instance instead of an aggregate of all instances the content would differ form instance to instance.
  
  But then you'd only be seeing your instance...?
  Which is already a thing, browsing by local...?
  
  All means all, it’s not meant to be curated.
  That said, it sounds like you are suggesting more of another sorting algorithm. Could be a neat idea.
  
  That would make it unusable for single user instances....

Well it is a little different because it won't include instances your instance is defederated from.
But what you're wanting is essentially why subscriptions are there
That being said, an instance curated feed alongside the all feed and local would be a cool option.
Using your example, literature.cafe having an admin selected feed of communities relating to writing would be awesome.
But, there aren't actually many instances where that would be useful, since there aren't that many focused on specific subjects.
The all feed is there for everything federated, and that doesn't need to change. It's a big part of how and why the fediverse is so cool. So fucking with it is a bad idea. Adding in options is nice, but the lemmy development has a roadmap that's pretty focused on functionality and stability, so don't expect this kind of addition soon

I don't think changing the default behaviour of the All feed is wise, but adding a sorting option like Hot(Local) or something to the All feed to see what is trending in terms of votes from your local instance could be interesting for medium sized instances. But for any small or tiny instance this would be essentially worthless so it would have to be optional.
- No need to add it. It exists. Just switch the view from "All" to "Local" and sort by "Hot".
  
  No, that would show posts made on your local instance sorted by Hot. Not global posts but sorted by what's voted Hot by your instance's users.

That's what the local feed is for.
I'm constantly surprised by people who don't seem to understand what ALL means.

Because then it wouldn't be "all" any more.
You could do something like that, where instance admins choose what they believe is more relevant, but then it would be better to call it "featured" or "curated"...

The all feed is all federated instances. If you want a different one you would have to find one federated to different instances. And if it was tailored, it wouldn't be "all" now would it.
- browse /all/new
  block every instance/comm/poster I don't wanna see
  It's that simple 🤷‍♂️ if I see something new I don't like, boom, list get bigger.
  
  That works if you never ever want to change your mind about not seeing stuff. Otherwise it sounds like a nightmare
  
  Oh I thought that was assumed.

There should be another feed, besides subscribed, local and all, that shows the channels that are relevant to the instance.
This idea relates to custom collections: https://lemmy.world/post/26654286
- How do you define "relevant to the instance"?
  
  Can only speak for myself, but anything the instance admin deems related. Or voted / suggested by their members.
  
  Posted, commented, or voted on by members of your instance, without counting what the rest of the fediverse is doing with it.

I agree, the all feed is commonly misunderstood to mean all of the Lemmyverse, but this is both a technical impossibility and also a false notion.
What the all feed actually means is all communities subscribed to by a member of your instance.
Especially on thematic, not too big, instances this can be quite interesting and definitely more useful that a bland feed of everything mixed together.
Obviously the bigger the instance, the more the all feed will tend to conform to a bland mix, and somewhat controversially a lot of instances are registered with a bot service that actively auto-subscribes each to other communities making the effect much worse.

How have you been here for a year and don't know you can sort your feed?

You are local for the Local feed. Example for literature.cafe: https://literature.cafe/
There is indeed some plan to tweak the All feed, but it's usually quite light: https://lemmy.zip/post/33065677

41 comments