Mastodon: Alternative sorting/aggregation methods

[ticki]

Twitter switched from newest-post-highest aggregation to a more complex, but hidden, system, which tends to give a nicer and more interesting timeline. There should be an option to enable a similar system.

From what I can gather, the system is somewhat similar to Reddit's system. It takes the time and a logarithm of the number of likes as well as the number of followers boosting it, then it adds these numbers multiplied by respective coefficients and sorts them based on that. It sorts posts in epochs, that is packages of posts from a given day (or 6 hours or something like that), then serves the sorted packages such that the newest package comes first.

---

• [x] I searched or browsed the repo’s other issues to ensure this is not a duplicate.
• [ ] This bug happens on a tagged release and not on master (If you're a user, don't worry about this).

[Exagone313]

I don't think one would want to implement machine learning in Mastodon, it's too powerful.

[Cassolotl]

I really dislike this on Twitter, and I think a lot of people are moving over to Mastodon because they don't like those changes that Twitter are making. So, if it's optional and off by default, I'm fine with it! :)

[ghost]

Please don't ever add this sort of thing to mainline Mastodon. I don't want to see the nice place we have deteriorate into that sort of popularity contest.

[ticki]

@Exagone313 I didn't suggest machine learning.

[ticki]

@Kimik0 I think it should be an option, not default necessarily

[joyeusenoelle]

I believe this is a hard wontfix. The lack of algorithmic sorting has been used as a selling point for Mastodon; implementing it would break that promise.

[sandhawke]

I'm confused at this wontfix @joyeusenoelle

Sometimes when I return to Mastodon, there's more content in my home feed than I have time or desire to read, at that point in time.

I think a decent algorithm under my control could help pick the best of the recent content for me to read, rather than just using time-of-posting. Time-of-posting is basically a random selection (with a helpful advantage for anything that was boosted). It doesn't seem like it would be hard to beat that baseline, actually.

In what regard am I unusual? Doesn't everybody have this problem, sometimes? or do you choose to follow very few people?

To be clear: I'm all in favor of a UI that keeps the user in control of this, and doesn't feel disorienting. One option would be yet-another-feed-tab that's Best-Of, with some settings for what it should use as algorithmic inputs (default: your Likes), and a simple minute/hour/day/week/month button at the top.

[nynhex]

Not a fan of this one either. This is not twitter.

[sandhawke]

@nynhex Do you understand my problem? Can you explain how you use Mastodon differently so that you don't have this problem?

[codl]

Chiming in to say I too would really like this as an option. A way to catch up would be nice

[nightpool]

see also Discourse's opt in "summarize this topic" button.

On Sun, Apr 15, 2018, 5:11 AM codl [e-mail] wrote:

Chiming in to say I too would really like this as an option. A way to
catch up would be nice

—
You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.
Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub
https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/3782#issuecomment-381391730,
or mute the thread
https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAORV695M2ClBqWfamK768ANgqnf4Phjks5tow7EgaJpZM4N7rlN
.

[elplatt]

Just came here to post something similar. In general it seems that it would be very useful to allow different sorting algorithms. Right now, mastodon only works if everyone you follow posts with different frequencies.

Here's what some of my friends and I have been wanting: top of feed is most recent unseen post from each user I follow, in chronological order, followed by remaining posts in chronological order. This would prevent a lot of the algorithmic meddling that plagues facebook and twitter, while allowing me to follow people who post with different frequencies.

I'm willing to help develop this. Wanted to touch base here to see if anyone wants to collaborate, or if anything similar was already being done.

[josephrocca]

Also came here to post an issue about this, though more aimed at the option for "top day/week/month" type sorting to help me catch up, rather than a "sort by hot/trending" option. Largely agree with @sandhawke's confusion about the wontfix and the general opposition here. The main point here is that there would be various options so that Mastodon supports a variety of usage patterns and needs. The current sorting method could of course remain default.