this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023
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@McBinary I think it's easier to describe the different users problem by comparing different titles first.
Obviously these are over the top examples, but this kind of difference can be incredibly important, especially when the differences in intent are subtle.
So which one do we display as the "main" title for the group? As it stands, we give them equal footing (which looks like spam), but pick your favourite controversial topic, and imagine that our stacking solution quickly decides that END OF TRUTH is the only title we really need to show lmao. All the others can just be piled into the "+ 7 others" stack.
We've basically chosen which narrative is the True Main Story, and which ones can be de-emphasized. Uh oh.
Now let's do that all over again, but it's two users. One user is the head of PoliticsA, the other is PoliticsB. They both post an article about their debate. Obviously they choose different titles as above, so the winner chooses the narrative.
But the OP gets emphasized in the comments too, so they get to spread their opinions a little better. Are we cool with most people only seeing the thread that pops off a little quicker?
Most viewers aren't going to go through the de-emphasized posts, it's obvious the main one is the one where all the activity is now. Many won't even notice the other guy posted it too, he's lost somewhere in the + 7 others threads lol.
Equal footing is fair, but ugly. If we smooth over the content, we lose more and more subtlety and eventually we lose details that actually do matter.
Messy, I know. I'm so sorry lol.
Maybe don't do it globally. I mean, is there one global truth? Maybe provide access to links for all communities/magazines to which there was a link, combine those as "related discussions" under a drop-down menu, but recommend, make the primary link, the appropriate magazine/community based on the subscriptions or viewing history of the user?
Otherwise, say Donald Trump runs and wins the 2024 presidential election in the US. A link to a story about it on CNN is submitted both to a Republican-favoring magazine and a Democratic-favoring magazine. The Republican guys are happy about it, the Democratic guys are unhappy about it. If you choose One Global Truth, you dump all the Republicans into the Democratic forum or vice-versa. Either of those options kind of sounds like a recipe for infighting and trouble. Would be better to try to direct the Republicans to the discussion on the Republican-favoring magazine and the Democrats to the discussion on the Democratic-favoring magazine.
So, like, maybe you rank the magazine priority based on how many times a user has viewed that magazine. I mean, if they enjoy reading that magazine, then presumably they'll keep going back and automatically expose their preferences as to where to read something.
I'm not sure that that's completely perfect -- like, I could imagine a situation where one has a general tech magazine and a more-specialist magazine dealing with a very specific piece of technology, where one uses the general tech magazine more but would prefer to see the magazine dealing with the particular technology in question if a link is submitted about that specific technology. But it seems like a reasonable heuristic to start with.
@tal I think you understand the concerns here! The devil's in the details, and it's annoyingly difficult to create a tidy aesthetic solution with acceptable consequences.
Ranking based on user preference is interesting, but I suspect it eventually escalates to creating another black box algorithm? Youtube / Instagram / TokTik / etc? There's a whooole rabbit hole here that could seem like it's helping at each step, but easily becomes a mess of relevant factors.
And don't forget that people are more likely to click stuff that makes them mad!
I kinda think this shouldn't be fediverse policy, it would probably be best to keep it to visible (public) actions like votes and boosts.
@shepherd Yikes! Okay I see your point. In that case the tabbed experience that @Mallard suggested sounds even better than it originally did. It would allow users to pick which instance to view from, and potentially that would even open up the option of users picking their preferred instance for display?
@McBinary Yeah, considering the whole point of the fediverse, finding an actually perfect solution is... like really hard? Tabs seem really promising! But this is why I ended that other reply with please poke holes in this plan lol, WHAT DID WE MISS THERE'S SO MUCH AT STAKE