Reflecting on Lemmy's Active sort
TL;DR:
Posting and voting is important, but with Active sort being the default across many instances, commenting is just as if not more important in helping surface various posts.
Although the instance I’m posting from hasn’t updated yet, I’ve taken a look through other instances of the new sort options, and I think they’re nice additions.
However, in doing so, and bouncing between different sorting options, I’ve noticed something pretty obvious but nonetheless worth recognizing imo. Since the default sort across many instances is Active, commenting feels like it has as much importance, if not maybe more, than voting alone.
You can find a number of posts here & there expressing some frustration at the state of content across Lemmy instances, and to a degree it’s not unfounded; yet what’s also helping surface much of the content exasperating others, and keeping it at the top, is much of the commenting to each of those posts. At least, under the Active sort setting, as that’s basically its intended purpose (that is, to display posts with active conversations, not uh…surface stuff exhausting to some people).
I realize we can get around this individually by changing the default for ourselves (I personally tend to keep mine set to New), but I think it’s worth considering from the outside looking in what kinds of posts we’re surfacing and keeping at the top with our conversations. Posting a bunch of varied stuff is one thing, but if you see a post that catches your interest, it might be worth not just upvoting and moving on, but adding a comment here and there to try and help others see it.
Well, so long as the Active sort setting remains the standard across instances anyway.
By now I imagine many may take this as a given already, but I thought it worth noting considering some of the frustrated posts, and that I haven’t really seen as much talk about the importance of commenting in relation to surfacing content under Active sort. That’s part of why I keep my sort set to New and try to chip in comments to different posts without comments in different communities that catch my interest, even if they’ve already seen several votes.
TL;DR:
Posting and voting is important, but with Active sort being the default across many instances, commenting is just as if not more important in helping surface various posts.
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