Piefed has feeds now!
-
Feeds subscribe you to those communities
I mean if you click on subscribe, to subscribe to all the communities within, that's kind of intended behaviour?! If you just view it, it shouldn't really be an issue. I guess there is some way to figure this out in an acceptable way.
How'd you follow a feed to regularly visit if not without subscribing to it? The person you responded to complained that communities may get unwanted traffic if they were included in bad feeds. So while you suggested subscribers only comments and it would work for 'all' feed to filter out low effort trolls it wouldn't work with feeds where they are already subscribed to it.
Just like with communities where you don't look them up each time you want to see their content and you subscribe to them to have them easily accessible on you subscribed list or in subscribed feed the same would go for feeds.
I may have missed your subtle suggestion somewhere about changing the behavior of feeds in which case the feature would check out although that would cause some friction still when it comes to ease of interaction.
-
How'd you follow a feed to regularly visit if not without subscribing to it? The person you responded to complained that communities may get unwanted traffic if they were included in bad feeds. So while you suggested subscribers only comments and it would work for 'all' feed to filter out low effort trolls it wouldn't work with feeds where they are already subscribed to it.
Just like with communities where you don't look them up each time you want to see their content and you subscribe to them to have them easily accessible on you subscribed list or in subscribed feed the same would go for feeds.
I may have missed your subtle suggestion somewhere about changing the behavior of feeds in which case the feature would check out although that would cause some friction still when it comes to ease of interaction.
Hmmh. And I've missed another point. If you want to do things like add communities later on, and this somehow propagates to existing subscribers, this can't work together with anything but one subscription per whole feed.
I haven't made complete sense of the feature and the consequences yet. I thought I'd just open the feed from the top bar and use it to categorize stuff for myself. But yeah, that's not the main point of it. I'm probably just very tired, I'll stop talking for today because what I say doesn't make a lot of sense anymore. Wish you all a nice day or night or whatever it is.
-
An example for my use case is I want to support slrpnk and post on their selfhosting com but I don’t want only 1 answer. Federating my post to all three big selfhosting communities would allow more interaction while still being decentralized in the sense of not instance dependent.
Stick to one community. Assess pros and cons of similar communities and choose one. Create meta posts to discuss the choice with other members.
I disagree. Especially on coms where one needs answers. But I want to support smaller instances.
-
??????????????
Just don't use public feeds and have your own private feeds split into topics you're interested in where you don't have communities you dislike included. You have all the autonomy you need. No one tells you to subscribe to that one specific feed that doesn't curate the communities in the way you dislike. Just use it to organise your own subscriptions to have them by topics or catered for different moods of the day.
Maybe I worded it poorly, I know I can still do my thing, but I’m explaining why I would never use this unless it excluded certain instances.
-
Maybe I worded it poorly, I know I can still do my thing, but I’m explaining why I would never use this unless it excluded certain instances.
I missed this at first as well, but the "Create a Feed" button (colored almost the same as the background for some odd reason, using the PieFed theme) is accessible to you as a user, not simply an admin. So if you wanted let's say [email protected] and [email protected] but not [email protected], then you could do that. You probably should name it something appropriate like technology2, but mainly I mean that you are not limited to Feeds created by other people: the whole point of this is that now you can create your own (if you want to that is, or perhaps someone will have already done so).
-
I disagree. Especially on coms where one needs answers. But I want to support smaller instances.
Ironically, if Lemmy supported decentralization of communities in this way as PieFed now does, and as I guess Reddit did iirc, then you could post to a smaller community and people who were subscribed to such a multi-community feed would be able to see it.
However, there are many features of Lemmy that are even (far) more authoritian in nature than Reddit. Lacking both a modmail and hiding the account name of the mod who removed something of yours, plus not sending you any notification about the event, are three such examples, and there are many more where that came from.
On Lemmy, as on Reddit, a mod "owns" their community, and that's all there is to it - there is no decentralization inherent in the system, at least at the community level. Where the decentralization comes from is the ability to pack up and move elsewhere if needed. Or course, you would be able to take none of it with you, nor be able to leave a message at the old place that you had migrated. As you see, decentralization, while nowhere close to a "myth", is quite constrained - mainly I mean, that functionality is available to admins, more than mods. So nobody can tell you what to do with the communities on your personal machine, running the Lemmy software, which is open source.
Although PieFed allows for greater levels of decentralization in numerous ways, chiefly with the Topics and now the ability for users to create their own custom ones.
Although a caveat is that "cross-posts" - even those sharing identical URLs - between multiple communities are not collapsed in the listing of posts in a feed (yet, although as Rimu said it's a high priority to add that).
-
Once a community is known to an instance it is available via the search feature. Thus this really doesn't improve discoverability at all assuming the person adding it to the feed is already using the instance.
What it however does is moving the conscious choice of looking for and joining a community to an opaque follow feed button that makes someone subscribe to a lot of communities they know nothing about other than that someone else thought they somehow fit to a single word tag (and it is worse than hashtags on Mastodon as it is not the person making the post that adds them, but a totally unrelated 3rd party).
If I understand correctly that existing feeds can be altered later by the creator, then this is still quite an improvement over the old way that required potentially more limiting admin support. By allowing for such "mods" of not a community but rather of these feeds (again, rather than concentrating the authority solely in the hands of a full admin), it democratizes the process overall. Tbf not very well, but a little bit, and that's not nothing.
And if only a tiny change was made to more easily list out the full set of communities present in a feed (the copy button didn't seem to do that for me, but maybe it could become like a meta-sidebar feature), then it would democratize it still further to allow any user to see what communities are in those feeds - even those lacking a PieFed account, who simply wants to subscribe to those same ones while remaining on their existing Lemmy account?
Anyway, it's a step forward, however small or large, and that's worth acknowledging, woo-hoo! 🥳
-
Ironically, if Lemmy supported decentralization of communities in this way as PieFed now does, and as I guess Reddit did iirc, then you could post to a smaller community and people who were subscribed to such a multi-community feed would be able to see it.
However, there are many features of Lemmy that are even (far) more authoritian in nature than Reddit. Lacking both a modmail and hiding the account name of the mod who removed something of yours, plus not sending you any notification about the event, are three such examples, and there are many more where that came from.
On Lemmy, as on Reddit, a mod "owns" their community, and that's all there is to it - there is no decentralization inherent in the system, at least at the community level. Where the decentralization comes from is the ability to pack up and move elsewhere if needed. Or course, you would be able to take none of it with you, nor be able to leave a message at the old place that you had migrated. As you see, decentralization, while nowhere close to a "myth", is quite constrained - mainly I mean, that functionality is available to admins, more than mods. So nobody can tell you what to do with the communities on your personal machine, running the Lemmy software, which is open source.
Although PieFed allows for greater levels of decentralization in numerous ways, chiefly with the Topics and now the ability for users to create their own custom ones.
Although a caveat is that "cross-posts" - even those sharing identical URLs - between multiple communities are not collapsed in the listing of posts in a feed (yet, although as Rimu said it's a high priority to add that).
Thanks for taking the time to write this! This is well written and you make some excellent points.
Hiding mod accounts names is a weird choice and not notifying bans if even odder. Wonder the intention?
You make a great point with feeds! I didn’t consider that.
-
This will reduce the discourse quality significantly as it will bring in more drive-by comments from people not subscribed to the specific communities in question.
I hope there will be some way for communities to opt-out from this or maybe better require them to opt-in.
One REALLY super nice feature of PieFed is that the sidebar text is shown underneath EVERY single post. Lemmy does not do that, and especially some apps almost look like they are doing their best to outright hide that information for some reason, putting it many clicks away!?
Imagine seeing a post on All, and knowing what the exact and entire set of rules are, prior to posting (including a reply to a post, as you said a drive-by).
To be fair, someone does have to scroll down to see it. But at least it's right there on the same page, not some whole other page entirely and buried many clicks away besides (going back and forth to writing a message that way, checking specific acronyms in the sidebar area, can get really annoying that way! in those apps that do it that way I mean, while in a browser you basically would need to open up a new tab, one for the post and a separate one for the community).
At least this seems like it would help reduce such effects? Maybe? Alternately, these feeds are basically like meta-communities themselves, created (and maintained?) by a "moderator", so perhaps if someone did not want their community included (which seems to run counter to how many communities would want to increase rather than decrease their discoverability), they could write to the "mod" to ask that it be removed?
Alternately, perhaps communities themselves should have a "private" setting. Lemmy already has a "local-only" setting along those lines. I remember that Reddit has a bunch of opt-in features regarding discoverability, but all of this in both Lemmy and PieFed is extremely primitive in comparison. At least PieFed is moving quickly with adding new features, so for it even if not for Lemmy, there is a strong hope to see all of this that we are talking about!:-)
-
I disagree. Especially on coms where one needs answers. But I want to support smaller instances.
You'll need to make a compromise between supporting the smaller instances or getting the wider audience.
Crossposting to both doesn't help the small instance, most people will keep replying on the larger one
-
For the federating its a new kind of AP actor. I'll be putting in a FEP for it in the near future, but its basically a "Group" that only cares about the "Following" collection.
You can see example json for the AP interactions here: https://codeberg.org/rimu/pyfedi/src/branch/main/docs/activitypub_examples/feeds
The AP interactions for a Feed are:
- Send a Follow request for a Feed
- Accept a Follow request (this is automatic for public feeds)
- Reject a Follow request (this is automatic for private feeds)
- Announce an Add of a Community to a Feed
- Announce a Remove of a Community from a Feed
- Send a Delete of a Feed to subscribers
Hmm so the
Feedactor mainly consists of a following collection and uses Add/Remove activities. This really sounds like it should be aCollectionand not an actor. -
Yes having that option more easily accessible would be much apprechated.
Opened an issue: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/5458
-
Oooooooh, love u.
Opened an issue: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/5458
-
One REALLY super nice feature of PieFed is that the sidebar text is shown underneath EVERY single post. Lemmy does not do that, and especially some apps almost look like they are doing their best to outright hide that information for some reason, putting it many clicks away!?
Imagine seeing a post on All, and knowing what the exact and entire set of rules are, prior to posting (including a reply to a post, as you said a drive-by).
To be fair, someone does have to scroll down to see it. But at least it's right there on the same page, not some whole other page entirely and buried many clicks away besides (going back and forth to writing a message that way, checking specific acronyms in the sidebar area, can get really annoying that way! in those apps that do it that way I mean, while in a browser you basically would need to open up a new tab, one for the post and a separate one for the community).
At least this seems like it would help reduce such effects? Maybe? Alternately, these feeds are basically like meta-communities themselves, created (and maintained?) by a "moderator", so perhaps if someone did not want their community included (which seems to run counter to how many communities would want to increase rather than decrease their discoverability), they could write to the "mod" to ask that it be removed?
Alternately, perhaps communities themselves should have a "private" setting. Lemmy already has a "local-only" setting along those lines. I remember that Reddit has a bunch of opt-in features regarding discoverability, but all of this in both Lemmy and PieFed is extremely primitive in comparison. At least PieFed is moving quickly with adding new features, so for it even if not for Lemmy, there is a strong hope to see all of this that we are talking about!:-)
Communities want more discoverability to get more members that post relevant things. This does the opposite and actively hides the specific community from potential posters while increasing the noise in the comments.
I think people really need to have some serious thought about the consequences of what they are asking for. These feeds, similar to algorithmic recommendations of commercial social media, increase engagement (a dubious metric, primarily interesting for advertisers) but not discoverability.
-
Communities want more discoverability to get more members that post relevant things. This does the opposite and actively hides the specific community from potential posters while increasing the noise in the comments.
I think people really need to have some serious thought about the consequences of what they are asking for. These feeds, similar to algorithmic recommendations of commercial social media, increase engagement (a dubious metric, primarily interesting for advertisers) but not discoverability.
That's some really distorted understanding of "discoverability" that you have in your head. Sorry for your loss.
-
This is huge. Thank you to everyone involved.
Trying it right now, it's pretty sweet
-
Yes, that is high on the agenda.
Is there a plan to implement the possibility of a downvote free experience? Kind of like an instance disabling downvotes does on native lemmy?
-
That's some really distorted understanding of "discoverability" that you have in your head. Sorry for your loss.
Words have a meaning you know? "Discoverability" comes from "discover", which discribes an act of looking for something and not having something pushed into your field of view with minimal own effort.
-
Trying it right now, it's pretty sweet
new blaze account?
-
Words have a meaning you know? "Discoverability" comes from "discover", which discribes an act of looking for something and not having something pushed into your field of view with minimal own effort.
This is what I was referring to, your understanding is distorted because BOTH fall under the discoverability. You're bending the reality around you so that it fits your agenda ignoring literally anything that is said to you. The communities aren't forced upon you either as it's you choosing which feeds you follow the exact same way posts are added to a community you follow so they're not forced upon you buddy. Or what, should we get rid of communities as well? XDD Let's go back to microblogging where we can scream into the void that we can't navigate through due to almost nothing of organisation besides the tags maybe that can't even be moderated unlike communities/feeds. I guess we should get rid of the concept of tags too given your perspective on organisaton and discoverability of things you're interested in? Some of your points are valid but a lot of them are incoherent and ignore reality. Some of the suggestions are terrible for everyone out there too due to ignoring that reality. I'd work great if the world worked the way you perceive it through your mind.
