Something feels wrong but I normally just browsed "best" on reddit and that was a curated list of top subs. So it's weird to me to sort Lemmy by "Hot" and get a ton of posts from random communities with no upvotes or replies. Which they are obviously not HOT as no one has engaged with them except the OP.

I feel like something is "off" with the way it is curating things.

And it automatically shows posts added to the top makes using it a little bit janky

Personally I usually sort by "hot", works good for /all, but mixed results on subscribed

I have the same issue, would love to engage more but sorted feed is either same through out day or bloated

Reddit's top hourly was one of my favorite ways to browse. They need to implement that here. Just show me the top posts from the last hour.

So far hot has worked pretty well for me. Haven't really ran into the issues you mentioned with posts not having that many interactions near the top of hot, unless it's from a smaller community. My main problem I've had is when opening Lemmy after a bit or refreshing I'll get the same posts over again even if they're marked as read which is annoying and usually means I end up sorting by new. Would be nice if there was an option to hide already read posts. (Or if there already is one I'd be very interested in knowing where it is, also I use Jerboa mainly on Android so not sure if that changes anything either.)