Deeditt suggests other people’s journeys in two places: Journeys to Explore on Home in the app, and Popular journeys in the sidebar on the web. Both come from the same ranking.
You may have noticed that the list changes when you come back, or that someone you know sees journeys you don’t. Both are intended. Since this list is a ranking, you should be able to know what goes into it, and that is what this article explains.
The ranking only decides which journeys get suggested. It doesn’t touch deeds: the feed and the deeds inside a journey stay in chronological order, and attention never moves one up.
If you’re new to them, journeys are stories told one deed at a time.
What makes a journey popular
On Deeditt, popular means that people are paying attention to a journey now. Three things add up:
- What other people do with its deeds: comments and replies, endorsements, inspiration, favourites and reactions to comments. They don’t all weigh the same. Writing a comment or endorsing a deed asks more of someone than adding it to their favourites, so it counts for more.
- How many deeds it holds. Each new deed adds a little less than the one before, so length alone won’t carry a journey.
- How steadily it is written. A journey that has grown week after week counts for more than one written in a single sitting.
A journey nobody has reacted to yet can still appear, because its deeds and its steadiness count too.
Attention fades with time
Recent attention counts the most. A comment from this week weighs more than one from two months ago, and after several months an interaction stops counting.
So age doesn’t decide anything on its own. An old journey that people keep responding to can stay popular. One that goes quiet slowly gives way to others, and it can climb again if people come back to it.
Archived journeys can appear too, as long as they aren’t private. A story you finished writing can still reach someone today.
What doesn’t count
- Your own activity on your own journey. Interactions from a deed’s author or the journey’s owner are left out.
- Endless attention from one person. Only so many interactions from the same person count for each journey.
- Views and shares.
- Money. A paid membership doesn’t move a journey up, and there is no way to pay for a place on the list.
- What the journey says. The ranking doesn’t read the text or judge the subject, so a hard story is treated like any other.
Nobody at Deeditt picks these journeys by hand, and no AI model chooses them.
Why the list changes when you come back
If Deeditt always showed the strict top of the ranking, the same journeys would be seen again and again, and the ones just below them would rarely get a chance.
So the list rotates. Deeditt keeps a top group that is larger than the list you see, draws a selection from it at random and shows that selection in ranking order. If a journey is gone when you come back, it most likely wasn’t drawn this time. It hasn’t necessarily lost its place.
The ranking itself is renewed several times a day, so positions can move as well. And as long as there are enough authors to fill the list, each author appears with one journey, so one person’s journeys don’t take up the whole space.
In the app, See all opens the Journeys tab in Search, which orders other people’s journeys by their most recent deed. Quieter journeys have a place to be found there, whatever their position in the ranking.
Why someone else sees different journeys
Two people looking at the list at the same moment may see different journeys, for several reasons:
- The draw is separate. Your list and theirs each come from their own random selection.
- One of you may be signed out. Without an account, you see public journeys only. With an account, community journeys can appear too, and the attention on community deeds counts.
- You follow different people and have different interests. When you’re signed in, a journey moves up in your list if you follow its author, or if its deeds share categories with the interests on your profile. That only changes your list. Nobody else’s moves.
- You never see your own journeys. If yours isn’t in your list, that says nothing about whether other people are seeing it.
- Blocks work both ways. If you and another account are in a block, their journeys don’t appear for you and yours don’t appear for them.
What this means if you write on Deeditt
There is no trick to learn. Attention from other people and writing steadily are what move a journey up. A place on this list is one way for new readers to find a story, and it says nothing about what that story is worth.
You also decide whether a journey can be there. Only public and community journeys are ranked, and only the deeds your readers can see count. If you make a journey private, it leaves the list on the next visit. Memories never enter it.
