[paulmd]

they already do over-weight content from smaller subs, it seems proportional to how much activity a "normal" thread from that sub sees and if something is very popular in a smaller sub it'll pop to the top.

it's just not enough to outweight very regular, very popular content from the mega-subs. And more threads in popular subs increases the chance of something going viral. How often does something from r/zfs catch fire, really catch fire? Not that much. Even if that's only 100 upvotes for a smaller sub, it just doesn't happen that much. Smaller subs are generally closer to their average, they go viral less.

Frankly maybe 5 years ago I blocked Gallowboob and filtered a lot of the larger content-churn subreddits and it's dramatically improved the overall experience. There is (or was) still plenty of content in r/popular and the frontpage.