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This is a placeholder post for the official about page I've put off writing. Setting up a location to add things to is the first step. If you put something off, just split up the first steps even smaller.
Matrix can be used as a shorthand for the two portals through which Matrix can be seen. It is a Reddit alternative, also known as a link aggregator. It seeks to fulfill Aaron Swartz's original conception of Reddit. It was originally part of the milestone schedule of Reddit to use votes to not just determine what content makes it to the front page, but also to customize the front page for each user based on what they voted on.
On Matrix, this is achieved by using a positional system. Every post and every user has positional properties. When you vote on a post, you bring that post closer to yourself and yourself closer to the post. When you downvote a post, you push it away from yourself and your community (those immediately near you) and push yourself away from that content. There are a few extra details to keep everything spread out. Since people upvote more than they downvote, there would be a tendency for everything to collapse to a single point without a few more steps being applied. Matrix uses a finite approximation of a Hilbert space.
But what if you don't want this positional system to come into effect? Or what if you want more of it and care more about seeing content for you rather than what is popular? Well, great news. Matrix also gives you control over the sort and ranking algorithm. The default sort on Matrix is the custom sort. The custom sort allows you to select the weights for each factor. The available factors are score, age, proximity, bump, and comments. 'Score' affects how sensitive posts are to votes. 'Age' selects how new the posts should be. 'Proximity' controls how close the posts should be to you. The 'Bump' factor operates like an image board. When 'Bump' is higher, the posts that have been commented on recently will come to the top. The last is 'Comments', and that factor prefers posts that have a large comment count.
Subs on Matrix are created when they are posted to. Sub names are alpha-numeric and case-insensitive but case-preserving. Because subs are case preserving, it is preferred to use PascalCase when selecting a topic to post to. That is, each constituent word is capitalized when compounding them into a topic name. The terms sub and topic are interchangeable on Matrix.
You can also cross-post easily to multiple topics by separating each topic with commas.
As a guideline, when picking a sub-name and when using the quick cross-post feature, it is preferred to only target one obscure topic when doing so. Good: Funny, Videos, MyObscureTopic (maybe). Bad: MyObscureTopic1, MyObscureTopic2, SomethinNoOneWillEverNavigateTo3. Doing the latter only clutters the /new page. The quick cross-posting feature is intended to help fill in the subs people will be interested in navigating more quickly. If you don't intend for yourself and others to make multiple posts to a sub, and or you don't suspect anyone will intentionally navigate to that topic or follow your post to that topic, it is likely not an ideal topic name.
The most popular subs in terms of posting frequency and consistency can be found on the top subs page. An extended version of that list also feeds into the sub-suggestions in the post submission form. Subs which have been noted to have a high visit rate relative to the amount of content present there are also included in the sub-suggestions. The sub-suggestions also help encourage people to use the dominant case usage for a topic.
I'm going to write this up later.
Matrix is loaded with features, some of which are relatively unique to Matrix. I'm going to write up more about this here, but just outlining, we have:
Within the same ecosystem, Matrix also has some sibling sites that include an image host, a video platform, a small web-based game library, and a web-app platform. We hope to have a task and project management software within our ecosystem soon.
Submatrix is the hyper-curated lens to view GoatMatrix through, and is intended to be a professional-oriented Reddit alternative. GoatMatrix is a general link-aggregator platform. It is actually preferable to refer to the site(s) by one of those two names, because Matrix as a name is used by so many projects. The name Matrix was only used in this document to avoid a bias toward one or the other. It would be a little strange to be on Submatrix and read about GoatMatrix, or vice versa. Another way to refer to Matrix is as 'matrix or 'Matrix. Submatrix is also a pre-prototype phase of a hopeful future feature that is being ironed out, called 'parties,' in which groups of users can control the content they want to see.
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