Are Lemmy sorting types just broken?
Are Lemmy sorting types just broken?
You might remember this post where I asked about how sorting by "Hot" gives you a lot of new posts that were posted in quick succession, making it look like "New".
I was recommend by a few to use "Scaled", so recently I did. Except this felt even worse: I saw new posts that were posted in succession with 0 upvotes, one having 1 upvote.
Isn't this weird? Or am I doing it wrong?
No, it is not weird. Scaled, according to the docs, is like Hot, but less active communities' posts get a boost.
Edit: here's a bit more detail
The exact function to calculate the scaled rank is this one:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION scaled_rank (score numeric, published timestamp with time zone, users_active_month numeric) RETURNS float AS $$ BEGIN -- Add 2 to avoid divide by zero errors -- Default for score = 1, active users = 1, and now, is (0.1728 / log(2 + 1)) = 0.3621 -- There may need to be a scale factor multiplied to users_active_month, to make -- the log curve less pronounced. This can be tuned in the future. RETURN (hot_rank (score, published) / log(2 + users_active_month)); END;The hot rank is calculated like this:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION hot_rank (score numeric, published timestamp without time zone) RETURNS integer AS $$ BEGIN -- hours_diff:=EXTRACT(EPOCH FROM (timezone('utc',now()) - published))/3600 RETURN floor(10000 * log(greatest (1, score + 3)) / power(((EXTRACT(EPOCH FROM (timezone('utc', now()) - published)) / 3600) + 2), 1.8))::integer; END;Exactly. In a small community that usually doesn't see much activity, if a post gets even one upvote, scaled might consider it relevant.
But these are 3 posts with 0 upvotes that recently have been posted, how is that "Hot", let alone at the top of "Hot"?
"Hot" is a mix of recency and votes. The posts in your example score low on votes but very high on recency (<1 hour ago) and extremely high on the size scaling because that community ( !hp_fanfiction@literature.cafe ) is tiny with only two subscribers.
You may consider Scaled to be a more appropriate sorting option for when you're viewing the communities that you've subscribed to, rather than the firehose of /all
Ranking:
Hot = Upvotes / Age
Scaled = Hot / Community size
Hpfanfiction must be a fresh community with no one joined yet and the creator posting a lot immediately. Alternatively, it just federated to LW.
On hot, I guess you managed to open it with the exact same second?