Ride those celestial surfboards through the 'verse!

This is buried toward the bottom of the release notes so I’m bringing it up here:

Added instance-level default sort type

Any admins out there considering changing their instance sort settings or asking people on their instance if they’d like this changed, given that we can individually set sorting anyway? Taking into account the inclination of people to never adjust default settings (I remain deeply curious about this tendency, as an aside), I think it might be worth at least bringing up to one’s instance community.

If they decide they want it to remain the same, all good, and even better, it raises some people’s awareness that they can change it themselves.

I think while some of this may be people being people (i.e. tendency to only discuss issues/problems vs accomplishments/solutions), I think there’s also a technical element to it as well in Lemmy’s case.

Up to the latest release of Lemmy (as of writing this is v0.19.4), admins couldn’t adjust the default sort setting, which was Active. Read the docs on the sort setting and Active does what it says, surfaces those posts with recent commenting activity (taking into account score as well).

So you get this unfortunate mix of: people gravitate to discussing negative stuff, people tend not to change default settings (since despite defaults being Active, we can change these if so inclined), and the default sort settings surface whatever is being most discussed/commented on, resulting in this sort of negativity feedback loop you’ve observed.

I noticed and posted about this a few months ago, have tried to upvote and comment on less negatively-focused posts occasionally, but I think this may be an interesting example of a small scale systemic issue as it takes more of us doing similar to address what’s being encountered. However, as more instances update to v0.19.4, I’ll be interested in seeing if admins decide to switch away from the Active sort setting to try to address this in their own way.

I don’t know what sort setting may be better for instances to run with instead, but I’m glad they now have the option. In the meantime I think it’s worth reminding people that they currently have the option to change their default sort settings to something different to try to see different kinds of posts. Personally I switch between New and Scaled to see a variety of posts beyond many of the regular doom and gloom posts.

Appreciate the adjustments and responsiveness! Gave it another try after this and the different formatting hit the spot! Still need to use more to see more finely tuned results, but dig the idea.

Also as others have already said plenty, would be cool to see this cleaned up for an open source release. If you’d like to see how some others are handling a sorta similar idea but with RSS feeds, you might look to Nunti for ideas on how to approach it.

Little feedback on the UI from taking a peek at this.

When I went into settings and adjusted post display style from card to anything else, it wasn’t clear to me that this wouldn’t apply to the new For You feed, which left me confused and less inclined to use it. I still gave it a try to make sure I wasn’t missing anything and to see how much the feed seemed to change with some light interaction, but I think you’d need to use it more than I did to see an effect.

Problem being: display settings not applying to the For You feed means I’m not going to use it much with the default card view.

Second part is that there was some comment display lag as I looked through posts, so if I looked at a post about cats with cat-related comments, those comments would linger and appear for a moment under a different post about possums. It’s just long enough to be noticeable, so thought it worth mentioning.

Huh. I had to take a quick glance at the timestamp of this article to make sure it wasn’t old, as this was the same issue that inspired a short-lived fork a few years ago.

I get where this article’s coming from, as I got where the people trying to fork it under a different name were too, however for better or worse I think what matters even more to people is that the software works well and has a good UX. If I remember right, I think Glimpse intended to focus on improving the UX but it didn’t last long enough to do much in that regard.

Better than my memory though, here’s an article that gives some insight into what went into the cessation of its development.

It’s really hard to gauge humanity when it really only takes a few terrible people to ruin things for everyone else.

Using that perspective to recognize the many other alright people I think might be a way for people to encourage one another and feel less wary of calling out bad actors. It’s a funny thing, but the same live and let live tendencies we appreciate from others at times seems to diminish the slight resolve necessary to push back against those negatively affecting many others.

Similarly, I think it’s beneficial to recognize the good as much as the bad, as otherwise we take the former for granted and can grow too jaded and overly cynical.

It’s a fun way of saying be yourself more or less, and also that we’re in major industries and always have been and will be; plus that we’ve always been around regardless of what others may insist

Didn’t honestly expect so much advice, but appreciate all of it! Feel free to share some interesting stories as well though!

This is all just for hiking. For backpacking I have way more.

Is backpacking marathon hiking? 🤔

In the worst case they don’t get anything at all 😬

Tales from the Crypt for spookies.

Mentioning this in contrast with funnies got me thinking…And hey, they did meet!

“The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window” was a pretty good (non anime) series too. – It’s a kind of hilarious take on scary movies and the tropes within them.

I see they’re competing with some Japanese shows for long, descriptive titles! Jokes aside, this sounds up my alley!

Hah, yeah, I tried to mention a variety so people wouldn’t think any show was too old or too niche. I watch whatever manages to snag my interest in some way.

Some shows I check out simply from the sudden uptick in memes, which is how I found my way to Columbo.

Seeing as this thread is still active, instead of continuing to reply to people throughout, gonna go ahead and put this out here.

If you’re not finding an active community for something (safe for work, that is) or any community whatsoever for your interest, you’re welcome to post about the topics that interest you in !general@lemmy.world till you find enough likeminded people to get a separate community going. This was always allowed tbh, but I’ve tried to make it more explicit and clear that it’s cool.

You’re welcome to post about papers and discuss them over in !general@lemmy.world to try to get this going for more specific communities!

You might give the programming.dev instance a try for the first couple subjects, as they have an open !programming@programming.dev community that may work for them.

Given the absence of specific communities (or active ones so far), if people would like they could start these conversations over in !general@lemmy.world.

I recognize it’s not the same, particularly for getting to those deep dive points you mention with ATLA, but gotta start somewhere, right?

Also I can easily give this go-ahead being one of the mods there. Up to now I’ve hesitated popping into threads like this and pointing people there because I’m not a fan of consolidation, but it’s become apparent some simple meeting area may help to get more niche communities spun off and going.

Brings to mind this NSFW ('cause light horror) short film “Circles”

I agree on both points!

I like to try to add a little more levity around here, especially when it’s in the spirit of the original post!