Lemmy just implemented it for 0.19 and it makes a big difference on heavier queries like Scaled homepage.

It also has the advantage of your pagination not getting screwy if new content has been added between page 2 and 3 queries.

I was going to recommend looking at https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/paginate-search-results.html#scroll-search-results - but it looks like that method is now not advised- but if you read up above it it looks like there’s a search_after/PIT method described which sounds similar to the article.

This is all to say - I don’t think this is a one-off concept - it’s been around for a bit.

Thanks! Agreed, it's a very limited usecase.

I have my doubts about the technique, but it could be useful in certain controlled situations

This is completely uncontroversial advice and has been for 30 years. What are your doubts exactly?

I’d go further: if you see a query that uses “offset” on a non-trivial production DB something is very, very wrong.

Of course, the trick is that you need to make sure you have indexes for all sort orders you need to display, but that’s obvious.