⚙️ Control your Feed Preferences - Fixes & Updates Coming Soon 🛠️
Similar Worlds has now for the first time since our launch 5 years ago, upgraded our Default Feed's algorithm, from being purely 100% Chronological, to now taking into account Both Content Relevancy and Time of Post.
[i](This is something we have been letting users know, for years, is planned and being worked on.)[/i]
We understand that after 5 years of being accustomed to one specific feed format, this change will be "Drastic" to most users, and can seem confusing and uncomfortable initially. We do apologize for that, and ask that you please bear with us.
However, we do believe, and have already begun to see, that many users are beginning to understand and get more comfortable with the recent changes.
We also understand that such a major cannot have a perfect initial release, as much tweaking and improvement needs to be done, as we test the performance and results of these changes, and listen to user feedback.
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As some users may have noticed, the "Customize Feed" options are currently unavailable, but are being worked on and will be Upgraded to offer more control, and compatibility with the new Feed Structure.
Certain amount of user feedback was needed (which has been helpful) to help us finalize what customization options will be offered, and how they will function.
[i]Some of the options that will be made available very soon:[/i]
[c=004A59][big]Customize Feed[/big][/c]
[b][u]Show more of:[/u][/b]
[b][i]Friends & Following:[/i][/b] 🔲 Everyone | 🔲 Mix | 🔲 My Friends & Following
[b][i]Subscribed Groups & Categories:[/i][/b] 🔲 All Groups | 🔲 Mix | 🔲 My Groups & Categories
[b][i]Comments in Feed:[/i][/b] 🔲 Less Comments | 🔲 Mix | 🔲 More Comments
[b][i]Post Order/Sorting by:[/i][/b] 🔲 Time Posted | 🔲 Mix | 🔲 Most Relevant
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[b][u]Additional important notes:[/u][/b]
• The New/Smart Feed changes does take some time to initially "Warm Up", to sort itself out. The Stability of these new feed changes should improve with time, and with your usage of the feed, and regular interactions with other users.
• Your "Own Posts" appearing in the Home Feed, will likely be returned soon.
• The new Feed changes are not "Random", but they are also not purely Chronological, as have been for the past 5 years. The feed now takes into account, Users and Groups you Follow and interact with, as well as the recency (time) of the content (Post/Comment).
• The more often you see a particular Post/Comment in your feed, the more it will slowly begin to "Drop" lower down the list of posts in that feed to you. This helps you to see more content you may not yet have seen, and less of the same, each time you visit the home feed.
• We will be continuing to improve and adjust these changes, based on user feedback and analysis.
• [b]Customize Feed[/b] (Control your Feed Preferences), will be returning very soon, as mentioned above.
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Thanks for reading, and for your feedback. Kind regards! [i][c=005E2F]- The SW Team[/c][/i]
This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »
Once the "Customize Feed" settings have been completed and released, users will be able decide more or less, almost exactly how they prefer their Default Feed to be.
Users will be able to adjust:
- Broad range of User Content, or very Specific / Limited to your Friends & Following.
- Broad range of Group Content sources, or more limited to our own Subscribed Groups.
- What general proportion of your feed should be Comments, or should they appear at all.
- How much of your feed includes "Relevant Content" (users you interact a lot with, but may not be specifically following - we try our best to estimate the most positive interactions).
- Priority Order of the Posts in your Feed, by Time or by Relevancy (more granular selections will be added).
It is being made in such a way that the options overlap and accommodate one another, so that users can tweak and decide with a high amount of specification, how they choose for their feeds to appear.
The feed may never be perfect to many users, however we are doing our best to make sure that all users at least have some significant say/choice in how their feed should appear to them.
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As mentioned before, the previous options that were in place, have been there for much of the past 5 years, which is quite a long time.
[u]Users had No Choice[/u] but to get used to what limited options were made available.
Interface Changes are almost never well received on any social platform or other type of website (unless it's the addition of New Features), because as we understand, there is comfort in sticking to what someone is already used to.
[u]We've only had less than a week[/u] to observe how these new Smart Feed changes perform and affect user's usage of this website.
During this short time, we have gained valuable feedback and insight, which is helping us to improve these new changes to accommodate most of the preferences of each user.
We are hearing all of your concerns, and thanks for the feedback.
We do ask for a bit more time and understanding, as we are working steadily to continue improvements and release the pending customizations and fixes.
Users may realize that we have fixed a lot of errors and improved a lot of the inadequacies of these recent changes, over the past few days.
Using the customization feature "Sorting Order", and setting it to Max preference of "Time Posted", will order all of your posts [u]near 100% Chronologically[/u].
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[i]Sorting Order[/i]: [b]Time Posted[/b] < [b][c=1F5E00]o[/c][/b] - - - - > [b]Most Relevant & Not yet Seen [/b]
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On the average day, the feed should appear about 100% Chronological to you, however, there can be some instances of "Super Relevant Content" (maybe from your closest Friends) having a bit of a "Bump" above some posts, above it's usual chronological position, at least until it is seen.
Since there are a myriad of overlapping options, some features can include their own priority in the final sort.
However, there should be no concern of having a "seemingly random time-sorted feed", if you have Max "Time Posted" setting, selected.
@Andrew It's the [i]near[/i] I don't like. I want to be able to see [b]all[/b] unfiltered, or manipulated by any algorithms. Why won't you allow us this?
We used to be able to see posts by friends in our circle feed. What was missing there were their replies for other posts.
I think those of us choosing to see threads chronologically didn't expect for the algorithms to be omitting threads using different filter at the same time (relevancy).
Sometimes we are not seeing many of the threads in the main until later or when we refresh.
That means ours are also likely not being displayed.
[quote=@PillowPrincess]It's the near I don't like. I want to be able to see all unfiltered, or manipulated by any algorithms. Why won't you allow us this?[/quote]
You haven't yet seen how the "near 100%" performs, so I'm not sure of the reason for the complaints in advance.
As explained, any "Shift" from "100%", with that Max Time-Sort option selected, should be negligible to the point of not making any real difference to 99% of users.
1) [u]Near 100%[/u] is going to be, on the average day "100% Chronological" to most users of that setting. It's already way more user customized control that almost any other social media platform would be willing to allow their users.
2) 100% Absolute of Anything comes with trade-offs. While there are many "Power Users" who know exactly what they want or what is best for them, there are also many users who may casually select a "100% Time-Sorted", and risk popping into glance on SW for a moment, and not see anything super interesting, then immediately leave the Feed/Site. (most visitors to Home Feed, only stay there for moments, before navigating away)
In the event that there is an "Extremely relevant post that may be useful for the user to see" (as explained before), that post could potentially be pushed a few spots higher on some occasions, if some very small factor of Relevance is kept.
There are lots of different users to cater for. Not all users utilize the feed in the same way, and many may select a "100% Time-Sorted" to their own disadvantage.
A very small "Near 100%" variability is going to be NEGLIGABLE shift from "Purely 100%" to most people, while it should be "just enough" to help accommodate for those who may not be power-users, and those who almost never take long scrolls down the feed.
3) In the same way, "Max Relevance" Sorting will still always contain some degree of "Chronological" factored into the final result.
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[quote=@Miram]I think those of us choosing to see threads chronologically didn't expect for the algorithms to be omitting threads using different filter at the same time (relevancy).[/quote]
No threads should be "Omitted" from the feed in the manner you describe, unless there is some other setting (such as Mute) which overrides that.
It's possible that in "some uncommon cases" a very Relevant/Important post to you, could be shifted a few spots higher, while Max Time-Sorted is selected.
But such occurrences should be rare enough, or small enough, to not make any noticeable difference to most.
[i]Example cases of other user types:[/i]
There may be some users who frequently spend time away from SW, that could be a Week, a Month.. [i](which is very common)[/i]
They may quickly check in to SW (with Max Time-Sort selected), and risk not seeing anything very interesting in their feed, before leaving again.
While there may have been a Super-Relevant, Super-Interesting post that was made by their Best Friend, just 1-2 hours ago...
Retaining some small window of "Relevance" for such cases, can allow us to "Sticky" such important posts for a bit longer, so that those user types may not miss out on a lot of things they would have otherwise liked to see.
Again, it benefits the user-base as a whole, when we closely consider ALL user-types, and not just the Power-Users, who frequent here every day.
Most of the Feedback here comes from Power-Users/regulars, who may be more savvy with specific customizations.
The larger majority of users are not that frequently on here, so we need to have some slight consideration for those cases.
@Andrew Call it complaining in advance if you like. It's more of a concern in my eyes. Anyway, it's your site. Thanks for trying to explain it to me. My humble idea would have been for you guys to go on with all your fancy algorithms, and just leave one option open for all users to pick a 'pure' and unfiltered feed if preferred. It wouldn't have to be the opening picture for new people looking inside. They won't see it all anyway. However... Take my input or just drop it, I'm not the owner of this place, I'm just a long term user.
Hi @Andrew -- I'm one who occasionally spends a couple days to almost a week away from SW for work/travel reasons. And I'm someone who used to keep my feed on friends only.
I completely understand what you are saying here and I look forward to having posts from my best friend "bumped" a bit even though I'll likely be setting my pref to chronological.
@Andrew I appreciate the effort you put in describing updates as detailed as you do, but maybe it would be better to tone it down a little.
Take this issue for example: by mentioning exceptions before people could see the setting in action, they got (understandably) riled up about not going to get the simple sort option they requested. Then you had no choice but to get into even more detail to convince everyone that the exceptions will be negligible and the planned setting will in fact pretty much look and feel like 100% time based sorting.
Now if you had just said you're working on a setting to sort posts by time and left it at that, people would have been happy. And though it may not be entirely true because you do take relevance into account to a very small degree, people may not even have noticed the rare exception. Even if they did notice, people would probably think it was a curious little glitch rather than a problem that is going to majorly limit the reach of posts. Then you could have explained it's actually only 99.9% chronological and still 0.1% relevance, without much drawback.
I've seen people get understandably upset about things that hardly mattered in practice before, so maybe it's worth reconsidering the amount of details you share and when. I'm a big fan of complete openness, but being open about extremely rare effects may cause more harm than letting them happen "sneakily". And if you do want to be completely open, it's worth considering to reveal the 0.1% effects after letting people experience the 99.9% use case instead of straight up.
@NerdyPotato Our point of view is simply different from an admins' perspective. We are those whom he called "power users", and we are only a few hundred. Without the occasional users the site will not survive, and those need to be approached in a different way. I believe that whatever the final outcome will be, it is certainly well-considered.
@Andrew By your definition I am most certainly a so called "power user" and possibly then some by some of my own SW PSI's about similar worlds.
I attempt to make them neutral by the way, just the facts, with no opinions.
Yet I have noticed that many want every single post that is possibly available. With absolutely no filtering.
Now I know that is not likely to happen just simply because of blocks and mutes, much less any other kind of software filtering.
Yet I believe it's the software filtering that many are upset about the most. There really should be some kind of chronological everything which is totally unfiltered.
Being a so called power user I don't block or mute anyone. I also have maximized within reason all my interests. Then as well I probably am subscribed to the most groups.
I have done this mostly to maximize the number of posts on my feed. Yet even still if I do a search on the word "and" or "the" I see posts not in my feed.
Now why must I do that type of search to begin with to see more posts? 🤔🤷♂️
Please note many power users are doing this anyway. Yet you only make it more difficult by not having such a setting!!!
@NerdyPotato You're absolutely right. It's way too much detail to share with users. People generally love to complain and point fingers. This approach just leads to problems. Like you said, people who did notice it, would've thought of it as some sort of curious bug, which was soon "fixed." When admins to go into detail, many users believe that means it's time to argue. 😃 Just release the update when it's done, and then tell people. Only write the most necessary information, and keep it short enough for all users to comprehend fully reading it.
