The problem of cross-community posting
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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. ππ½
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@Blaze Oooh. That is awesome! Pulling comments from other communities.
Thank you for the info and sample post. ππ½
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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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.
and moderation actions from cross-posted communities only affect their βviewβ, so to speak.
But then if someone posts insults (just to take a simple example), then the original community mods would have to moderate it, and can't rely on the cross-posted communities mods? Wouldn't that lead to cross-posted communities mods just consider that the original community mods are the ones responsible for the moderation, and leave it up to them?
And in that case, then the OG community mods would probably just prefer all the comments to happen on their community where they can delete comments and ban people.
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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
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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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From a discoverability standpoint it would be beneficial to see other communities' conversations on the same post.
You can already do that in Lemmy and piefed - crossposts are listed at the top
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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 βWhat The Fediverseβ?!
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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!
