This is a meta question, but I'm not sure where else to ask: In the past, posts apeared on my general frontpage if they had at least a few answers.
Now, (almost) everytime a AskHistorians post shows up in my flow of content I will only see new but unanswered questions. Since I'm only a reader and don't contribute to answers, I have to check the subreddit manually.
Has something changed in the algorithm? Can I change settings? I don't use any extensions. Reddit sorting is set on "Best" .
Hi there - as you've already guessed, this is the kind of change which is almost certainly caused by Reddit's underlying algorithms. We have limited insight as mods into how, when and why these get changed, but certainly agree that they can have a disproportionate impact on how you experience mechanically unusual subreddits.
This lack of clarity means that it's difficult to recommend adjustments, particularly if your goal is to encounter AH content through your home feed. We obviously do what we can to make finding answers easier by collating and curating them, notably via our Weekly Roundup Facebook, Twitter and our Sunday Digest. We also have a browser extension that corrects the comment count on posts to only include visible comments that makes browsing for answers a bit easier. But there's a lot less we can do to mitigate sitewide mechanics in the way you're asking about.
I'd note though that our experience of the subreddit is very different to other users in that we are usually engaging with it directly or via mod tools, so we have less knowledge of how to play with feed settings - it may be that other users have found settings that can adjust things as you hope. If so, we wouldn't mind knowing how they managed either...
The Best algorithm is kinda funky, even the old one, and did change recently-ish
https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/o5tjcn/evolving_the_best_sort_for_reddits_home_feed/
It really doesn't work well for slower subs like AH or users who aren't subscribed to many subs. Rising doesn't seem to work well in AH either. For my own personal situation Best is unusable (I frequently get no results at all) so I stick with one of the others. Hot seems to work ok, it's essentially like top from the last week or so but weighted by how new they are.
I also check every sub-r I subscribe to manually, and I sort be 'new' for every one. I don't care about the silly popular stuff. I care about that one post with a single reply that's accurate or new information for me. I actually use /r/HistoriansAnswered to peruse questions on this sub - I find it much easier to find answered questions that way.