The problem of cross-community posting
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Fediverse projects are maturing and adoption of them is trending up. I'm excited for the further development of the underlying technologies as well as the apps being built to leverage those technologies into even more integrated, user-friendly experiences.
With any developing tech, small annoyances are found and ultimately patched or worked around. It's to be expected that no user experience is ever perfect, even for matured ecosystems. Typically, some smaller annoyances are tolerated when balanced with the overall utility and usefulness of the tech.
One of the issues I've noticed (and I'm sure I'm not the first or only), is that when posts are relevant enough that the OP decides to cross-post into multiple communities, the comments and engagement stays with each community post leading to separate conversations.
The existance of separate conversations itself isn't necessarily a bad thing. Maybe you post a recipe for Pot Roast in a general cooking community and also a community that helps refine recipes to improve them. It may be that the two separate conversations make more sense as the nature of discourse is focused on two different aspects of the content posted. If they were combined, it would be more difficult to sift through chatter to get at the discussion you were looking for.
This concept is true for different communities as well as different instances. Maybe the Pot Roast recipe conversation generated on lemmy.carnivores is substantly different from the conversation at lemmy.vegan-curious and the existance of both is bolstered by the cultures and seneabilities of the different instance/communities. That could create usefull and/or thoughtful discourse that maybe wouldn't have happened if everyone was mixed together and talking past each other.
However, there are plenty of informative posts attached to very similar communities on a given instance as well as posted to mirror-communities across separate instances. Each individual post is a separate entity and i find myself jumping in to different conversations of the same content to see what's being said in each. In addition to general replies often asking the same questions across all of the posts, unique engagement is diffuse and not connecting.
I imagine that an OP would have trouble keeping up with all of these different interactions and likely defaulting to paying their attention to only one or two while the remaining posts are left to fend for themselves. Even if the OP stayed on top of them all, I assume they'd often have to answer the same questions multiple times.
_The question I pose is: _
What is the solution to myriad and diffuse conversations around cross-posts? Is there a way to handle this situation thru lemmy-ettiquette or does it require a technological solution?
Maybe we handle it thru culture and expectation. If the decided upon method was to post once and then link that post to other communities for exposure, maybe that funnels everyone into one post to interact (when that's what OP wants).
Is there a software solution on the app developer level that combines like posts together? Is it a protocol level solution thats required? Maybe something that allows a single post to essentially 'tag' different communities for exposure, while only posting once? Can we associate posts to an individual user rather than associating the post to a community, so all replies come to the user post rather than in a community?
I don't know what the solution looks like and I'm not savvy enough to understand the protocol/software side to know if any of my examples are realistic. I also don't know if this is an issue for anyone else, or at least one that lemmy-ites actuallly care about enough to try and solve.
Does anyone know if work is being done to address this? Am I focusing on something that is simply not a priority? I welcome your thoughts.
...I tried to choose what I thought was the best place for this post, but I'm open to moving it if I was in error. (Ironically, something that might be easier if posts were handled differently). :)
Every instance should simply just stop thinking they should have their own version of X community.
Doesn’t PieFed merge communities with the same name?
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Every instance should simply just stop thinking they should have their own version of X community.
Doesn’t PieFed merge communities with the same name?
@meldrik @BorisBoreUs Piefed can do that now?
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@meldrik @BorisBoreUs Piefed can do that now?
I think it shows other comments, if the posts is crossposted.
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Every instance should simply just stop thinking they should have their own version of X community.
Doesn’t PieFed merge communities with the same name?
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@meldrik @BorisBoreUs Piefed can do that now?
It's been a while already
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@Blaze Oooh. That is awesome! Pulling comments from other communities.
Thank you for the info and sample post. 🙇🏽
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@Blaze Oooh. That is awesome! Pulling comments from other communities.
Thank you for the info and sample post. 🙇🏽
You're welcome!
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Is there a software solution on the app developer level that combines like posts together?
As mentioned in this thread already, piefed consolidates all the comments for crossposts when it detects them. As an example, you can look at this post on piefed.social. The link I shared is for the post on !news@lemmy.world, but below it you can see comments from the same article posted in !unitedkingdom@feddit.uk as well as !world@lemmy.world in their own sections as you keep scrolling. So, problem solved, right? Well...
One of the key phrases I used above is "when it detects them". So, how does piefed detect crossposts? The answer is pretty simple, it basically just looks for other posts that point to the same destination url. In the example I linked, that would be the Guardian article that is being discussed. This is the same way that lemmy detects crossposts. This approach is nice and easy and computationally cheap on the database (quick), however, there is a big shortfall of this method...posts that don't point to a url (discussion posts) can never be detected as crossposts. Lemmy offers the ability to hit the crosspost button on a discussion post and it will create a big block quote of the original post for you, but it isn't actually recognized as a crosspost in the software.
I don't have a good technical solution to be able to make discussion posts (and other non-url posts, like piefed events or polls) be crossposted properly. It likely would need to be tracked in the database somehow, but it would rely on users somehow indicating that the post they are making is meant to be a crosspost. I don't know really...
Anyway, that is the current state of crossposts. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
I think there is potentially a lot of value in having separate crossposts per community... E.g. if a link touches on multiple separate topics (say, cinematography and nature), then people visiting an cinematography community would probably prefer to see conversation related to their interest..
Agree that crossposts from similar communities (same name) across different servers should be merged though (although there probably should be a way for community mods to opt out of that...)
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What I think would be interesting would be to have communities be tags rather than exclusive categories. So if you make a post, you can add more than one tag to it, provided you are a 'member' of those tags.
Tags would have moderators much like communities have moderators now, to preserve the meaning of the tag. So you could have a tag like 'billionaire media', and members could slap that tag on all nyt, wapo, etc articles. Moderators would boot members who misapplied the tag.
Then what would be interesting would be to use the tags for searches, like 'news' minus 'billiionaire media'.
Pretty significant changes from what lemmy is today, so would be either a fork of lemmy or a from scratch new program.
Nah, because if if there's a post that's of interest to more than one community, and I'm only in one of those, then I probably don't want to see comments from those other communities, because they will be related to topics/aspects that I'm not here for (otherwise I'd also be subscribed to those communities).
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How does moderation work in this case?
Not OP and not involved at all in the development of the fediverse. But this is how I would do it, and if someone gets inspiration from it feel free to use it.
Upon creating a post, unlike now, it wouldn't be created for a community. Instead posts would be created under an instance. Each instance would have its own rules about posts and the admins of an instance can always decide to remove/edit/hide/whatever the post from the whole instance. As a user of an instance I'd assume they should follow the rules entirely of that instance at any time they interact in it.
Each post then could have a list of communities it is posted to. A post with no community would be part of a kinda global no-community community with the instance name or something (a different instance would then see it as a community-less post from an instance and can show it just like that.
Each community would have its own mod team and rules. As a post doesn't belong in a community, mods cannot remove or edit the post. But if a post breaks rules of a community that are not rules of the instance (like an instance that allows nsfw but the community does not), the mods can choose to hide any post from the community, and maybe even control if the user can attach a post again to the community.
That would include communities in other instances, which would link to the original post to take into account changes and what not. But now, both admins and mods can only hide the post, from the whole instance or the community respectively.
Comments belong to the post, of course, but comments could have some user modifiable field to exactly say what community they saw the post in and browsing the comments would be allowed to filter by community, and just like now, comments need to follow the rules of the instance. Mods can choose to hide comments specifically but only mods in that server can remove the full comment
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Not OP and not involved at all in the development of the fediverse. But this is how I would do it, and if someone gets inspiration from it feel free to use it.
Upon creating a post, unlike now, it wouldn't be created for a community. Instead posts would be created under an instance. Each instance would have its own rules about posts and the admins of an instance can always decide to remove/edit/hide/whatever the post from the whole instance. As a user of an instance I'd assume they should follow the rules entirely of that instance at any time they interact in it.
Each post then could have a list of communities it is posted to. A post with no community would be part of a kinda global no-community community with the instance name or something (a different instance would then see it as a community-less post from an instance and can show it just like that.
Each community would have its own mod team and rules. As a post doesn't belong in a community, mods cannot remove or edit the post. But if a post breaks rules of a community that are not rules of the instance (like an instance that allows nsfw but the community does not), the mods can choose to hide any post from the community, and maybe even control if the user can attach a post again to the community.
That would include communities in other instances, which would link to the original post to take into account changes and what not. But now, both admins and mods can only hide the post, from the whole instance or the community respectively.
Comments belong to the post, of course, but comments could have some user modifiable field to exactly say what community they saw the post in and browsing the comments would be allowed to filter by community, and just like now, comments need to follow the rules of the instance. Mods can choose to hide comments specifically but only mods in that server can remove the full comment
That's a complete overhaul compared to what Lemmy/PieFed/Mbin are doing now.
If someone wants to implement that vision, sure, but it probably won't happen until a few years.
The NodeBB proposition might be different as they already have their forum structure
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Nah, because if if there's a post that's of interest to more than one community, and I'm only in one of those, then I probably don't want to see comments from those other communities, because they will be related to topics/aspects that I'm not here for (otherwise I'd also be subscribed to those communities).
maybe could filter the comments based on tag as well.
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That's a complete overhaul compared to what Lemmy/PieFed/Mbin are doing now.
If someone wants to implement that vision, sure, but it probably won't happen until a few years.
The NodeBB proposition might be different as they already have their forum structure
Yup. This is how NodeBB does it, and why cross posting will work with less of an overhaul.
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That's a complete overhaul compared to what Lemmy/PieFed/Mbin are doing now.
If someone wants to implement that vision, sure, but it probably won't happen until a few years.
The NodeBB proposition might be different as they already have their forum structure
blaze@piefed.zip said in The problem of cross-community posting:
> That's a complete overhaul compared to what Lemmy/PieFed/Mbin are doing now.That might be the case, but it really depends on how the backend is structured. Are the posts and communities so strictly structured that a post cannot be a part of multiple communities? (rimu@piefed.social just pinging you about this)
In NodeBB categories and topics are all distinct elements, and the fact that a topic belongs in a category is contrived. A topic could be part of a user (pinned topics anyone?), a group (group only conversations?), or in this case... multiple categories.
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Its very nice and allows you to post on the original post, the cross posted post, and all other places. Its truely federated.
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I think there is potentially a lot of value in having separate crossposts per community... E.g. if a link touches on multiple separate topics (say, cinematography and nature), then people visiting an cinematography community would probably prefer to see conversation related to their interest..
Agree that crossposts from similar communities (same name) across different servers should be merged though (although there probably should be a way for community mods to opt out of that...)
The different communities on Piefed are still separated within the post. You can still see which community you would be replying to
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I don't want it to be combined. Different communities have VERY different conversations on the same content.
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Hmm... that's nice, but the comments are still separated.
It would be better if the separate reply chains were integrated but I know there are potential issues that need to be thought through.
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Nah, because if if there's a post that's of interest to more than one community, and I'm only in one of those, then I probably don't want to see comments from those other communities, because they will be related to topics/aspects that I'm not here for (otherwise I'd also be subscribed to those communities).
From a discoverability standpoint it would be beneficial to see other communities' conversations on the same post.
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How does moderation work in this case?
That's one of the issues that need to be worked through. It's a totally legitimate concern.
In cases where communities with polarising viewpoints discuss the same topic, it would lead to inter-community disputes and exacerbate some instance relationships.
One solution would be to have the original community be responsible for moderation, and moderation actions from cross-posted communities only affect their "view", so to speak.
I don't know what the answer is quite yet.
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What if upon cross-posting the default is separation, but a request is sent to the original community to request a comment tree merge?
Then you don't have to share comment space with the tankies unless you wish it
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Piefed splits up the comment boxes based on community when a thread is crossposted, so you can still distinguish between the comment boxes on different communities despite them being visible.
That said, a potential future option here would be a community opt-out of crosspost functionality in this way
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From what I recall, I believe that Reddit handles crossposts in a similar manner, that is, comments in one crosspost in one subreddit don't show in other crossposted subreddits.
Like Blaze mentioned in another comment, one of the problems with putting all the comments together is that different communities have different rules, so a comment that would be fine in one community might get you in trouble in a different community. People already get confused by this as it is. If all the comments from different crossposts get aggregated in one place, I think it would cause complete confusion and more work for mods.
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It's not that cluttered. Have you looked at how it looks on piefed?
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I'm thinking more about less clutter while reading
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You can already do that in Lemmy and piefed - crossposts are listed at the top
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They are separated because communities have different rules and different moderation teams.
I know as a user that the same comment on instance A and instance B would be perceived differently. I also know that if I report a comment, it will be reviewed by different mod teams.
As a mod, having a clear view of what comments have been made in my community and which ones have not also helps.
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Are the posts and communities so strictly structured that a post cannot be a part of multiple communities?
That's my understanding. If I understand correctly, a post belongs to a single community, but two posts referring to the same URL will be identified as such by Piefed, which is how the crossposts community consolidation happens.
In NodeBB categories and topics are all distinct elements, and the fact that a topic belongs in a category is contrived. A topic could be part of a user (pinned topics anyone?), a group (group only conversations?), or in this case… multiple categories.
Interesting, there's definitely discussions to have about how to map that with the Piefed/Lemmy structure
