🛠️ Smart Feeds v2 Now Released ☀️ Secondary Custom Feed 🌓 Coming Soon 📢
We are happy to announce that our [b][u]Version 2 of SW Smart Feeds[/u] has now been released[/b] and is available to all users! 🙂
We believe that these recent improvements made, should allow users better control of their Default Home Feed. In addition, each user should be able to accomplish their preferences more easily.
The variety of customizable options should benefit our user-base as a whole, where each user can have some greater control over what is shown in their feeds, rather than all users being subjected to one or two feed formats only [i](as it used to be - which may benefit some, but also inconvenience many)[/i].
We also intend to have a Secondary / Alternate Customizable Smart Feed, located next to the default Home Feed.
This will allow users to specify up to TWO highly customized Feed Layouts/Profiles, per their liking, where they can easily switch between these two, Custom-defined Feeds, in just One Click!
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We hope that these improvements to SW will provide a better experience to everyone. 👍
Thanks for the feedback and support. Kind regards! [i]- The SW Team[/i]
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I tried going into this with an open mind, but ended up with a feed that is more confusing and further broken in exciting new ways. Please help me understand how to get this right. Here are my settings:
The end result is that the top 10 or so entries in my feed are all comments from friends over the last hour or so, in a non-chronological order, followed by seemingly only posts after that. Posts are once again not chronological. There are also still posts that just aren't present in my feed.
Since the explanation of the various sliders are very vague, here's my reasoning for why I chose what I did:
[b]Users You Follow:[/b] Middle of the line because I want to show posts regardless of whether they come from followers or not. I figured middle of the line would mean it'd be weighted equally no matter the source of the post. [b]Groups you Subscribe to:[/b] Same as above, I aimed for middle because I wanted posts to be shown regardless of whether I follow the groups or not. [b]Relevant Content:[/b] I figured putting it to less would mean it would avoid doing relevance sorting, and just put it all out there without evaluating if I'd be interested or not. [b]Other Users:[/b] Not sure about the difference here between the first option and this option. Would kinda think putting it to "More" on the first option ("Users You Follow") would imply "Less" on this option (and the other way around). [b]Comments & Replies:[/b] Put this to more as I want to show all comments from friends I follow that have enabled the showing of their comments. I don't want any of their replies hidden (unless they themselves have disabled it), so would have thought having it fully to the right would ensure that. [b]Post Order / Sorted By:[/b] I just wanted my feed chronological. Simple as that. Yet entirely to the left still has some posts out of order.
@Andrew, @Nuno: How do I fix this? I just want the following: Feed to be entirely chronological, all posts shown from all users (assuming blocking/muting isn't involved), all comments from friends to be shown (if their options are set to show comments in friends feeds).
@Nuno Thanks for the reply. I'll give it a go when I have time to sit down and try it proper in about an hours time, and let you know if that is indeed what I was looking for. Just to confirm though, will this do the following, or will I find that it still doesn't properly achieve this?
[quote]Feed to be entirely chronological, all posts shown from all users (assuming blocking/muting isn't involved), all comments from friends to be shown (if their options are set to show comments in friends feeds).[/quote]
That being said, from the perspective of trying to understand those sliders it... well... makes very little sense. The titles of each slider are very vague, and just having to put some of this options to more or less doesn't make sense from the perspective of someone who doesn't have access to the inner workings of your algorithm.
Take "Groups you Subscribe to" for instance. Why would have have to put that beyond the middle (towards "more") in order for it to be neutral? Why would "Relevant Content" have to be one past fully left in order for it to weight all content equally?
@Nuno Had a chance to start testing this a bit earlier than expected. Can report the following: * On first refresh of feed I got as far as to the 6th entry before the chronological order broke down and gave me an entry that should have been further up. * On second refresh it took me 9 entries before the order was incorrect. 9th and 10th post were both out of order and should have been earlier in my feed. * My last refresh showed comments from someone I am not following, and also broke chronological order on 3rd entry. * A post made by non-friend user 1 minute after last refresh was present in my feed. A post made by non-friend user 3 minutes after last refresh was not present in my feed.
While I appreciate the attempt, I think it's clear to say that those options you presented are not at all what I am looking for. As such I still remain in the dark about how to tweak the settings to achieve the feed that I am interested in seeing.
@Andrew I appreciate that you are still tweaking things, but I'm confused about what fixes you are talking about since your reply too was a bit vague. Are we talking the language of the customization slider titles? That, by what Nuno said earlier, neutral seemingly isn't center of the sliders? Or that it seems like the sliders don't quite do what they imply they'd be doing?
@PirateMonkeyCabinet No prob., my meaning is frequently obscure, sometimes even to myself. In this case I'm trying to imply that cleverness with computing can be of little value if you're trying to communicate ordinary ideas to non-specialised but otherwise articulate people.
Well, I THINK that's what I was trying to convey; anyhow ever since I invented that little phrase I've been dying to use it.
@Really I do believe I get what you mean now. While I think I mostly do well enough in making myself understood and understanding others, English isn't my native language and sometimes my comprehension fails me a bit.
But yeah, this is one of those cases where those descriptions may make a lot of sense to someone who has full access to the inner workings of this algorithm they are using, but where for the average Joe who doesn't have the insight they do it's just a bunch of cryptic vagueness.
I'll be more than willing to admit that I have done such mistakes in some of the stuff I have worked on myself, but there comes a point where you have to look at what you are making and ask "how easy would this be to understand for an average user who isn't a developer and who might not be that computer savvy?"
@PirateMonkeyCabinet Hah, your English is excellent and you surely must know it!
From the very beginnings of computing there's been a lamentable lack of understanding between those who write the software and those who have to use it. Things seem to be even worse now, in the world of web page design, where 'cool' features and fancy graphics overrule user friendliness & convenience. More of a 'Look at what we can do' than 'How can I help you?'
