Hot sorting is not hot

[rs443]

Requirements

• [X] This is a feature request and not a bug report. Otherwise, please create a new bug report instead.
• [X] Please check to see if this request (or a similar one) already exists.
• [X] It's a single feature. Please don't request multiple features in one issue.

Describe the feature you'd like

Hot sorting on the front page is (or at least should be) a good mix of active and post currently getting a lot of upvotes.

However Hot seems to be plagued with bugs, or the algorithm is not tuned for the influx of new users and posts.

I frequently see hot posts that are anything but hot:

• Posts with 2 upvotes that are 50 minutes old
• Posts with 1 upvote that are 10 minutes old
• Posts with 1 upvotes that are several days old

My suggestions:

• Age filter that makes sure that no posts less that ~45-60 minutes are shown.
• Max age ~36 hours
• A formula that hot posts in all communites have the same chances of getting hot. 3% of subscribers in c/memes = 225 upvotes, 3% in c/bicycles = 3 upvotes.
• Upvotes and comments should count (if it doesn't already). 1 comment equals 2 upvotes or something. Will need tuning.

[rs443]

Example of not so Hot front page. The issue is the same on version 0.17.4 and newest UI: 0.18.1-rc.7 BE: 0.18.1-rc.4.

[Pome-ro]

Have you read the algorithm documentation, if not you should: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/contributors/07-ranking-algo.html

Just so you have an understanding of how it should work. Hot, to my understanding isn't supposed to provide the same kind of rank as reddits Hot sorting. Active is the primary sort.

[rs443]

Reading the Ranking algorithm believes me to think that there are some bugs happening. Min age and max age filter might be a good thing.

[grabowskil]

I don’t think either Hot nor Active are working as expected for small instances, with primarily federated content. I get really old posts with little active users on the first page of Active: