Yes, I've restricted my Relays to half random and half geographically close to me, and that seems to have made a big difference.
Discussion
How many relays is "enough"? Is there a good list somewhere?
I have 10 and everything seems smooth. Hard to know if I'm missing posts and things, but seems good
https://nostr.watch/relays/find
Then move the map to around you, click on pins and it says the name. That relay URL is what you need to add or remove from your Relay list. Make sure you Post/Save changes to the network and double check, some clients seem to have trouble pushing changes to the network.
How do you find out if a Relay is geographically close? If it is not to much of a hassle.
https://nostr.watch/relays/find
Then move the map to around you, click on pins and it says the name. That relay URL is what you need to add or remove from your Relay list. Make sure you Post/Save changes to the network and double check, some clients seem to have trouble pushing changes to the network.
Bruh, that site is so sick!
What kinds of difference? Performance, previously missed content?
In theory it’s possible to backtest relays and compare what events were missed or gained with different relays lists. Likely useful, but not indicative of what you should use going forward either.
Things loading faster now, high bandwidth usage, but pretty good performance scrolling and not seeing as much "message loading" type placeholder messages. Obviously all the relays I started with were random from something, I forget what