I've seen like 5 different posts about this already, I guess I'll reply to this one too xD
Lemmy "Hot" ranking is currently kinda broken. There's an edge case that stops the hot_rank column from decreasing, meaning the post never goes off the front page. Will be fixed in 0.18.
Do you know when 0.18 will be out?
Trite answer: When it's done
More in-depth answer: Currently there's no set date. It depends on how quickly they can tear out all the WebSockets code and replace it with simple HTTP (that's the BIG change, will fix a lot of different things), and then test those changes. The hot_rank fix has already been merged, that's done, but they want a stable, cohesive release with all the good stuff.
Current estimations I've seen range from 1-2 weeks, but it all depends on how fast they can get it coded and tested.
Why are they getting rid of WebSockets? It's really useful for instant data and is often faster than simple HTTP requests.
You can see the discussion about this here, but the short version is that it's not scalable, hits apps & browsers like a truck, memory leaks, and live updates cause feed reshuffling which is really annoying
The websockets work has been merged. I'm using it on my instance now, but there's no release yet. It's been really stable for me so far, so I'm hoping there aren't major issues and they can push it out soon.
2 weeks is juuuust in time for the 3rd party apps cancellation
Different sorting algorithm? But yeah I agree, the hot feed on kbin feels more active with posts as new as 30 mins.
I think default and timeline algorithm on kbin is better than on lemmy, but with little tweak and changing several settings, I can see more posts dinamically on my homepage.
Any tips on what settings to change?
What is kbin.social doing differently?
Unknown about kbin, but I’ve heard that Hot is currently broken for (most?) instances across the lemmyverse. (This might be related to the size of the instance - apparently for small (single-to-double-digit users) instances Hot works fine?)
Edit: and this is supposed to be fixed in the next release, 0.18
Where did you hear that?
I presume you're talking about Lemmy from any of the different instances. If you're looking at local it's only going to show local posts and not "everywhere". Be warned though, currently there's a bug where when you do select "All" it updates with a pull from outside the instance very often, so much so that it can make reading and browsing difficult. That should be updated soon.
I mainly tried lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, beehaw.org and a few others. I did try them with and without "all" and it was cumbersome regardless. Either I was served posts with zero or negative upvotes that to me do not classify as "hot" or my feed did not update at all.
What's weird to me is that kbin.social was the only one I tried that was not affect by any of this strangeness.
Sometimes I'm wrongly upvoted/downvoted the post when browsing through a very crowded lemmy instance. New posts like every minute lol
Kbin uses a completely different backend and is nicely optimised. The owner (Ernest) is also investing in server space to accommodate the higher user activity.
They might answer you themselves, I'm sure they're lurking here somewhere. 🙃
Have to agree that Kbin.social has more consistently given me content i'm interested in.
It's also nice that it doesn't do dynamic updates by default, so I can just look at what i'm interested in and refresh the page once I want to see new things.
I think the “dynamic updates” behaviour is tied to Lemmy’s use of websockets instead of http. Kbin uses http. The Lemmy devs have stated they’re going to move off of websockets in the future as they present scaling issues with the way the software is written.
The websocket protocol allows bi-directional push communication regardless of the previous request which means that new posts are constantly triggering server side updates which then appear like a page “refresh” on clients.
Arguably, while websockets have very cool realtime features compared to http, for a Reddit-like content aggregate their use can quickly overwhelm usability without significant retooling.
It depends on what you mean by other servers…Lemmy instances? I haven’t seen any differences between kbin instances.
Kbin is entirely different software from Lemmy; it’s a completely different backend.
So that would be why it’s “better” in that regard than Lemmy instances. My understanding is that it’s a bug in Lemmy that will be fixed soon.
The “popping” of the feed in Lemmy is tied to their use of websockets instead of http. I believe the devs stated they’ll be moving off of websockets in the future.
Kbin is entirely different software from Lemmy; it’s a completely different backend.
Wow did not know that. So how can it interact with the lemmy instances if it's not running lemmy software?
Not only can this Reddit talk to that Reddit, it can also talk to the various Twitters, and YouTubes. Twitter can also talk to Instagram, Facebooks, and Goodreads, etc. That's the magic of the fediverse!
Via the ActivityPub protocol that fediverse software uses :)
Pretty cool stuff!
Kbin can also directly interact with Mastodon users and toots because of this. Kbin magazines can natively contain both “threads” from Kbin and Lemmy, and microblog “posts” from Kbin and Mastodon. (And other software depending how they map these features.)
Because they use the same protocol: ActivityPub
For example, E-Mail gets send over the protocols pop3, smtp, imap. It doesn't matter if you use Outlook or Gmail for Android or whatever email program. They still send data to each other using these protocols. Therefor both know what to do with the information exchanged.
There is software that is completely different from Lemmy and Kbin which can still interact via the ActiviyPub protocol. For example Mastodon for Twitter-like mini blogs. Or PeerTube which is a video platform. Pixelfeed is an image sharing platform similar to Instagram and the like. But since they all use AcitvityPub you can interact, comment, vote etc. on these images and videos or mastodon posts here on Kbin or on Lemmy.
In theory this sounds great. But obviously the different software needs to have the backend and the UI to support these features.
To make it even more difficult to implement, all these different installations are spread over many different servers (= federation). Which all can have differences in their software again and different speed and rules about how often they synchronize their data, etc.
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