Reddit made it impossible to have long-term discussions like forums do. Posts would just fade into irrelevance after a day or so, whereas with forums new comments would bump the thread.

Lemmy has a sorting option just like forums:

“New Comments: Bumps posts to the top when they receive a new reply analogous to the sorting of traditional forums”

And Lemmy also has the “Active” sorting method, which says:

“Calculates a rank based on the score and time of the latest comment, with decay over time”

so Active seems like a compromise between Hot like Reddit and the way forums do it by New Comments

https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/users/03-votes-and-ranking.html

  • simple@lemmy.mlEnglish
    9·
    1 year ago

    I think Active could use a little bit of tweaking though, it seems like some posts last too long and obscures newer posts.

    • Landrin201@lemmy.mlEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      I agree. It’s hard to tell, though, if it’s because of the huge influx of new people arriving and interacting what what they are seeing in active, or if it’s a flaw in the system. I’ve been here 2 days now and active hasn’t changed almost at all, this morning I saw one new post near the top.

      I think after a week or so it will probably stabilize and we’ll start seeing more posts get higher up.

      • Die4Ever@programming.devOPEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        yea also we might just not be used to the slower turnover of Active, compared to Reddit’s Hot, I’ve also only been here for 2 days so idk

      • simple@lemmy.mlEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        It’s probably because the algorithm was tuned for a smaller community. As soon as posts got hundreds of comments it likely made things stay at the top for a very long time. Definitely something that will get tuned over time.

    • Die4Ever@programming.devOPEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      yea it’ll be interesting to find the midway point for Active to be properly in between Hot and New Comments

      but I think it’ll take time to tune it, especially because right now we’re getting a big wave of users and content

      it also depends what you want though, if you check regularly then maybe you want to sort by Hot, but a more casual user might be better off with Active sorting

  • ram@lemmy.caEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    Ohhh I’m gonna have to look at what sorting options I use in the future! This is interesting!