Feedback Navigating communities is problematic IMO

The community search system needs a default sort order by participation. There are far too many small communities that are showing up in a search. Do a search for "3d" and "3d printing. Look at everything that pops up. There is only one regularly active community in that list and at least for me it is down near the bottom. I moderate it and I was just trying to find it quickly to review new posts and that was very mildly frustrating. If I know what I am looking for and it feels this way, I can only imagine how it feels for new users. In fact, as someone that has been daily active since June 9th, finding new and engaging communities has become...less organic and more of an uphill struggle.

As far a searching, I was going to post something on Lemmy Support for .ml but I couldn't even find it in the first couple of pages by searching with and without my subscriptions.

I'm not here to complain. This is just straightforward feedback. I was using Photon for this experience. The shorter card style search results of a search with photon are largely what made this issue IMO. I need a better default sort priority to make such a short list seem natural as a UI; to feel like the results are relevant. IIRC I tried searching the following with no results on the first page after setting the search to communities: support; Lemmy support; Lemmy support .ml