You don't actually need to follow all that many people, on here, in order to have a very lively, diverse timeline. Just have to follow the handful who are the most-active or who repost a lot, and then turn on the wine filter.

Same as on any social media, really. Or any situation where humans are interacting.
Pareto principle.


People often only follow the largest accounts, but most of those are relatively dormant. They're large because people know them from other places and not because they're active.


What’s the wine filter? I’m new here so still trying to figure this out


Hi, Isa! :-) Welcome to Nostr.

There's a private/paid wine relay (the symbol is a glass of wine, you can see it listed in the relays in my profile https://next.nostrudel.ninja/#/u/npub1m4ny6hjqzepn4rxknuq94c2gpqzr29ufkkw7ttcxyak7v43n6vvsajc2jl/relays)

Once someone subscribes to that relay (which is a server containing the notes of the subscribers), they can then add the special filter that pulls notes from other big relays, so that you can see the notes of your followers and from the people they follow. You can also use it to "broadcast" to other big relays, to make sure most Nostr users can see your notes.

https://docs.nostr.wine/filter/readme


Totally agree on both points. I think the advice you often see of follow as many as possible and then curate from there, is really bad. (imo of course lol). Probably leads to an increase in the 'they only talk about 1 thing' complaint, the most prevalent and damning complaint of nostr (again imo). And it's pain in the arse to unfollow after you've followed 1000 people posting the same 5 b/tcoin memes and saying the same 5 b/tcoin slogans lol. (Once again, imo lolol)


Like with all social media, don't trust a client's recommended / autofollows. They are almost always the worst accounts ;). Nostr is no different from legacy social media in this regard.

#introductions


Yes, most of the less-active accounts are lurkers who post an old meme once per week or repost everything the Big 10 accounts post. As if everyone weren't already following the Big 10 themselves, so you end up with a feed full of reposts and tired memes, but devoid of original information.

There are people here following thousands of npubs, but their feed is basically dead. More effective to just find someone who reposts things you are interested in and allow them to curate your feed.


Yeah, good advice.

You basically hope that any new person knows what signing up to a social media is like, and they'll have to dig to find anything. It's slightly different cos nostr is sort of pitched as being different. And it's also slightly different cos your feed is prone to be drowned in The One Topic without some discernment.


Yeah, I like The Topic That Shall Not Be Named, but I don't want to see only that and I've had to dig hard for the other stuff.


Exactly this.


I suspect they're sometimes just financial sponsors, to be honest, or people the client-developers are hoping will promote the client. Client influencers. LOL


Oh, I thought you meant it was best to get drunk before reading something.... 🫠


What I mean is that the trending lists seem to take into account which note is getting the most interaction directly (replies, quotes, reposts, zaps, likes, etc.) -- which is mostly a reflection of how many followers that npub has --, but not how much interaction the interactions are getting. There's no measure of the second-order interaction, typical of human conversation in groups, so you can't really tell how much influence one note is having upon the wider discussion.

So, a GM note from a huge account is "trending", a lively back-n-forth discussion between small and mid-sized accounts isn't, but the second is where the "human action" is.


I think from the perspective of a client it is quite difficult tbf to them lol. User retention is bad, they have to try something, and this is a method social media uses. But you also can't really recommend anything too odd/controversial/ niche. So you're back to replicating 'legacy social media' and their blandest / generic content posters as safe recommendations. There's just not that many people here really, not much you can do about that in this process lol. So I totally get it.


They could simply create a trending list that measures human interaction, so that people could jump into lively discussions.

That would solve the problem of clicking on something "trending" and having it be a thread where nobody responds to your reply. Sometimes the original note poster isn't even "here". So it's just like they throw a bone and everyone shows up to squabble over it, but it's not a real discussion and the replies are dull and flat.


You can see what I mean from your own posts.

Why is this post trending https://primal.net/e/note1tzqpuza2pgmkq2ette3neah0wq96jx0ch4289lmdn5lpreasrf2s3xzakx
but much more interesting things you've posted, where the conversation was long and complex, haven't. Perhaps has something to do with the hour of the day you posted the note or the note simply being very short.


OR JUST GUNS AND TITS YOU KNOW?!


All of their posts are guns and tits. LOL


Oh lol, I didn't know I was trending on primal. It's not even got many likes or replies. I think you're right that, it's a timezone thing, nostr is v quiet at these hours. And primal will let any old rubbish go on trending lol


I tried to make a group/community to help with his obvious lack called #discuss - made to highlight posts of interest but aren't by the people who are promoted or the 'inner circle jerk' or whatever you want to call it lol.

But communities / groups are somewhat defunct and fiddly.

I wonder how you ould automate it, cos obviously this could easily be gamed, and would also highlight posts of no interest but with lots of replies. (Could be eg a word count? I don't know + some element of WoT? ... I don't know)


Oh I had to go to the 1 hour Trending to see I was on it. You're on it too now lol.


Continue equation: -The Topic, -top 200 followed. 🤔


You can measure human emotion and engagement with simple patterns.
You just have to trace the pattern of the replies, to see how flat the structure is, how many people are involved in the different levels of the structure, and how grammatically complex and diverse the replies are.

GM
- GM
- GM
- GM
- GM
- GM
- GM
- GM
- GM
- GM
- GM
- GM
- GM

Groundbreaking topic
- Complex note from npub 1
-- Complex response to npub 1 from npub 2
- Complex response from npub 1 from npub 3
- Complex note from npub 4
- Complex note from npub 1
-- Complex response to npub 1 from npub 2
- Complex response from npub 1 from npub 3
- Complex note from npub 4
- Complex note from npub 1
-- Complex response to npub 1 from npub 2
- Complex response from npub 1 from npub 3
- Complex note from npub 4


Yes, I think you are right. By which I mean, I have no clue how automation / detection works in reality, but it sounds like you know what you're talking about.

Sounds like you could be capable of making some sort of interesting discussion / post highlighter bot? 🤔

I would like to see primal replace their sidebar with something like this.


The reason why the first note is obviously going to be a boring read is clear: nobody expects it to contain interesting infomation in the replies, so nobody opens the replies, they just respond with their own GM from their feed, or zap, and move on.

You want to highlight the notes where people have opened it up and started chatting.


I'm more logistician than bot programmer.


I don't think they understand the math enough to do that. They've tried to mimic the effect with time-frames (1-hour, 2-hour, etc.), but that often is just a reflection of active time zones, rather than interesting discussion. Europeans tend to trend until Americans wake up and drown us out.


Tbh I would prefer any sort of customisable sidebar on primal. Even replacing it with the #asknostr hashtag, at least that is/was (mostly) used but people who have something to bring up / want answered.


Because the Amis haven't woken up, yet. Thin user base.


Your piss post is trending on the primal 4-hour time span, now. Hilarious.
I guess they're proof that you can throw a lot of money at a project, but that won't guarantee it's any good.

All it takes is someone clever reading this thread and implementing such a solution in their own client, to steal their user base.


Really sexy would be a conversation heatmap, where you could see the intensity and scope of a discussion-cluster. Maybe even including replies to quoted notes, in addition to the original note and its replies.

A visual way of tracking "where the humans at".


nostr:npub1wqfzz2p880wq0tumuae9lfwyhs8uz35xd0kr34zrvrwyh3kvrzuskcqsyn nostr:npub1m3xdppkd0njmrqe2ma8a6ys39zvgp5k8u22mev8xsnqp4nh80srqhqa5sf
How about them apples?


Send me to a note freaks are fuckin with right now- button


I've never been trending on primal. That's hilarious. Must be because I'm talking to you, or something.


"Yo, where can I get my chat on?"- button.


"Where da hos at?"- button. LOL


"Where da party at?" - button


Yeahy communities are still very beta.


🤔🤔 I have a feeling you're not new lol 🤔🤔 🫡

I could be wrong tho lol


PERFECTION


To prevent gaming the algorithm, you'd want filters to cut out notes below a certain length that are more likely to be bots (remember "Happy New Year"?).

It would be really cool to do a social graph visualization that shows which notes are seeing the most interaction.


Yes, I mention that in the other comment. Nothing short or too repetitive or similar. "GM" "Good morning" "Hi" "Yo" is all the same thing.

You would also want to filter out anything too reply-guy-ish. Sometimes discussions break out in GM threads, but sometimes it's just a string of GMs, so you'd filter out the second type.


Here is another example. This note shot up into the trends, but it has a flat structure and the original poster has never replied or written anything else. No human interaction, despite so many replies. We all just look silly.

nostr:nevent1qqstd2mffmavec70lf3q66ycm550c9tyh364quzev9c3pakdfr7kcegpzamhxue69uhkummnw3ezu6r4vfkkz6m9wghxjmczyrw587khexkvw6wl3ku80860crt0fktldg9z0rk05gvrukjc9u5y7qcyqqqqqqgwdv7xx


For the wine filter, are you referring to the global=all parameter ?
If not, wouldn’t you get more notes from the filter if you follow more people ? Since it shows you notes from your followers follows


Well, that's what nostr.band has done, but my idea is a novel type.

Patent it. 😂


Theoretically, yes. In reality, no. I have a 2000-follow account and a 200-follow account, both with the filter, and nearly-identical feeds.

It is the old adage, at work:
The people you know, know more people than you do.
So, adding more people adds surprisingly little because of the tendency for everyone to follow a subset of people.

There are a few big islands, often separated by language, but the focus within each island is on a subset of 10% or so.


Your 200 are more less included in the 2000 right? I’d be curious to do a test where the two sets of follows are totally different. However, I don’t think that’s totally possible here yet. Small village


Yes, same core. Adding more from the same island doesn't do much.

I had the same experience on X, tho. Same dynamic anywhere humans congregate.