PieFed help

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Can someone help explain the difference between topics and feeds? (piefed.social)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by Tim_Bisley@piefed.social to c/piefed_help@piefed.social

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My understanding so far after a couple days is that joining a community gets it to show up on your front page but has no effect on it displaying under topics.

In topics these are pre-built groups of communities (like multireddits). You can't modify them.

Feeds are custom groups (like a multireddit) you can make that are just like topics except under your control. You can manage what communities are in the feed and show up under each category. You can create a feed that shows up as a "sub-feed" just like in topics. If you join a public feed it is like a user made topic where you can't change which communities show up in the feed.

Am I understanding these correctly?

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[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Yes: Topics are basically pre-built, fixed Feeds, whereas Feeds are user-customizable and also shareable Topics, and subscribing to a community doesn't affect it showing up in one of those (at least, definitely not Topics, and I presume therefore also Feeds).

The learning curve here is real yo, but otoh it is quite useful to have such choices. e.g. if you don't want politics flooding your Subscribed feed, then don't subscribe to any, leaving you free and clear of it - and yet all you have to do is click the News & Politics Topic and you can see it all, thus allowing you to have your cake and eat it too (both avoid politics, or any other high-volume communities, and yet visit them too, anytime you want).

Another method is to click the bell icon next to the community, topic, or feed (or user, post, comment, pretty much anything) and then you'll receive an actual notification whenever something is posted to it. Feeds are better, e.g. if you didn't check PieFed for a week it wouldn't flood your inbox with posts, but for low-volume communities that's yet another way to get at them.

Feeds are brand-new, so they might end up being reorganized somehow and integrated differently than they are now, side by side along with Topics. Hrm, maybe Feeds could go higher in a combined menu, so that as people subscribe to Feeds the Topics get pushed down? Or maybe people don't need Topics at all, now that Feeds exist, so those could just become pre-subscribed-to Feeds, which someone could leave if they don't want them anymore, and want their Feeeds to appear higher. Lots of thoughts to still think through there...:-)