The problem of cross-community posting
Fediverse
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I'm thinking more about less clutter while reading
It's not that cluttered. Have you looked at how it looks on piefed?
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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). :)
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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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.
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.
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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Alternative suggestion - allow communities to block crossposting functionality with specified communities in the community settings.
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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?
Shall we keep memes on Beehaw or .ml?
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As mentioned in another comment, as a mod there's not a lot of value mixing other comments I cannot mod about to the ones I can mod. Seems like an easy way to abuse the system and avoid moderation
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the conversations should be combined
Disagree. As OP points out, there is value in separating the discussions as well.
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Different conversations in different moods and cultures on the same subject are something completely human and normal, and tech should not work to undo this. When we have seen tech undo this is with social media silos, after all.
Which is to say, any "solution" that integrates those conversations into one view should be, where possible, client-side only. That way I can opt in to view some conversations as unified or not, depending on eg.: how well do I know the context, or whether the OP is a person known for cross-posting (and to where), while at the same time not forcing everyone else to have their culture of conversation subsumed into essentially an attempt to make topical subreddits.
Finally someone who gets it. This "problem" is in fact a total non-issue. Different groups talk about the same thing all the time. This is good, not bad.
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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). :)
What about making crossposts look like a quote post? Reddit already does that.
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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). :)
What if a post was its own separate thing, detached from the communities. You then "attach" the post to one or more communities.
When a user comments on a post, the comment "comes from community xyz" but all comments are attached to the post not the community.
Lemmy applications can choose to filter comments from one or more communities or show them all.
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Piefed groups comment boxes from crossposts into one post. So no matter which crosspost you're looking at, you'll see all responses.
This kinda erodes cultural differences between different communities though. Different communities may have very different approaches on how to talk about a post. I feel like this approach just leads to monoculturism.
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This kinda erodes cultural differences between different communities though. Different communities may have very different approaches on how to talk about a post. I feel like this approach just leads to monoculturism.
I think you may be overestating the amount of crossposts that happen for the idea that it would somehow cause 'monoculturalism'
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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
Good to know, thanks! Also, good idea on the opt-out.
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the conversations should be combined
Disagree. As OP points out, there is value in separating the discussions as well.
There is, but I am not sold on giving up entirely on the idea simply because disparate communities might not want to talk to another.
I agree that treading lightly is paramount, but the benefits of cross-community interaction could very much be worth it!
One thing is for sure: making this an opt-out is not the way forward.
Gli ultimi otto messaggi ricevuti dalla Federazione
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> If it's some automated feature, I don't think it should be in the source property of the federated JSON in the first place.
Thanks, it's this.
Edit: oh interesting, I looked into it. We serve the absolute URL in HTML but not in markdown. I had no idea threadiverse apps read the markdown. Neat!
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Not sure if you're already aware, but that relative link there is broken in Lemmy, Mbin, and Piefed.
If you used it manually, I'd suggest not using relative links in posts targeted at users from software that hasn't implemented them yet.
If it's some automated feature, I don't think it should be in the source property of the federated JSON in the first place.
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@rekall_incorporated@piefed.social said in [Fediverse wide cross-instance / cross-platform link substitution [UX improvement thoughts]](/post/https%3A%2F%2Fpiefed.social%2Fc%2Ffediverse%2Fp%2F1568622%2Ffediverse-wide-cross-instance-cross-platform-link-substitution-ux-improvement-thoughts):
> This issue is unresolved in Lemmy, but the Lemmy brand is permanently tainted among users who are looking for alternatives to American oligarchic technology services. The low moral standards of the Lemmy devs' (support for the brutal North Korean regime, promotion of russian propaganda narratives that they know are false) is a massive turn off for the exact target market of the Fediverse. It's a fact that many Europeans looking for alternatives instinctively recognize the demagoguery of the Lemmy devs and their fans.I don't think this is true at all.
The average user doesn't know what Lemmy is, let alone the political views of their core development team.
But don't worry, it's like that joke about vegans:
How do you know the Lemmy devs are politically dubious? Don't worry, someone on the threadiverse will tell you.
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How the links act is different from client to client. If you click the link in the Lemmy web UI, it will take you directly to Lemmy.wtf, but if you used Voyager (iOS client), it will automatically redirect to your own instance.
This is something that should be built into the Lemmy web UI.
You can also use browser addons. I have an addon that redirects me to my own instance, if I click on a link in my browser. I also have an addon that takes me from YouTube to Peertube, if the video also exist in PeerTube or if I click a PeerTube link, it takes me to my instance.
Also how dare you criticise the awesome TLD .wtf, which is clearly an abbreviation of “What The Fediverse”?!
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I've seen that being used. It works fine for more technical users, but it's just an extra pain point.
If you make links, you need to apply the service Different UI from whatever instance/client/platform that you are using.I much prefer Piefed's soon to be released link substitution feature.
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Mbin has had that feature for a while too
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It's a temporary workaround but the experience is still clunky
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Well; atleast for lemmy, there's https://lemmyverse.link/ ; which fixes exactly what you mention. You send that link, other people choose their instance in the redirect, and boom!
