Or is the feed only about the things people I follow share?
I have noticed they show up there but they also show up if I am not following the tag. I guess I didn't word the question correctly, I should have asked something like this: does following a tag affect the rank/position of posts tagged with it in my feed? Also a related question: is there a place like feed but only for the tags I follow? Edit: I think I understand how it works now, no need to answer. I am a little tired. If nobody I follow shares the tag but I follow the tag it will appear in my feed.
mk is much more authoritative than I, because as many #bugski posts as I've made I've never bothered actually reading the hubski code, but as far as I know if a post is in your feed it is because 1) you follow the poster 2) you follow someone who shared the post 3) you follow one of the tags on the post In general, following people who post/share things you're interested in is better than following tags, because we're only consistent with a handful of tags around here and hubski is low-traffic enough that the posts you don't care about you get from following people aren't going to drown out the posts you are interested in.
Thank you for the detailed explanation and the advice. I try following the people that I frequently see posting good content, today I decided to follow a few tags for the first time because I wanted to know how it worked but since the tags I followed were already in my feed (shared by the people I follow) I noticed no change. That is what made me ask this question.