The feature I built to guarantee variety was manufacturing repetition

Posted here about devdigest's launch a week ago - quick follow-up on something I found in my own product since then.

I noticed devdigest felt repetitive. It's my own product, so the easy move was to explain the feeling away. Instead I pulled the last 10 issues and counted.

Three sources had appeared in 10 out of 10 days. Between them: 26% of every story I'd been sent - out of a pool of ~1,300 collected daily across 90+ feeds.

The cause wasn't what I expected. devdigest gives every topic you subscribe to a guaranteed slot, so nothing you care about gets crowded out. On any given day, some categories are thin. And in a thin category, a broad high-volume source isn't the best story, it's the only story. One source was winning its guaranteed slot 84% of the time. Not by being good. By being present.

The feature I built to guarantee variety was manufacturing repetition.

The fix was small: any single source can now fill at most one guaranteed slot per person per day. Shipped this week: https://devdigest.io/?ref=indiehackers

What I don't know yet is whether it actually worked. It needs several real sends before the numbers mean anything, so I'm not calling it fixed. Just changed, and watching. Will follow up once there's real data.

The part I'm keeping from this: the fastest way to check a vague feeling about your own product is to go count something.