One of the things that the recent addition of the Feeds feature highlighted was how many cross-posts / duplicate posts there are. When you display posts from linux@lemmy.world, linux@programming.dev, linux@lemmy.ml, etc all the cross-posts make it get repetitive, really fast. The same thing happens on the home feed too although it’s a bit less obvious because there’s a wider range of subjects involved.
Except now, it doesn’t, because PieFed de-duplicates your feed! And your home page, and your topics. Attached to this post is a screenshot showing how it works out - an article posted to 7 different places is only shown once despite me having joined most of those communities.
We’re still figuring out whether it’s a good idea to merge all the comments from all the cross-posts into one page and how to do that in a way that respects the different culture/rules in the communities that the posts were made in. It’s a tricky UX and social question.
I’ve held off on adding a cross-post function to PieFed until now but it’ll be added soon.
Ragrding merging comments, I think it’s best to keep it as it is - let the user choose which thread they are in and which comment section they participate in. :)
more importantly: different communites, different rules. If i want serious discussion on a topic, i can visit the community that enforces serious discussion. if i want some fun with it and see memes and shitpost comments to that topic, i go to the other community.
but i can not have a serious discussion post if it is enriched with memes from an other community.
i LOVE getting an overview of cross-posts. this allows me to learn about other communities, how active they are and how important or wide-spread a topic might be.
Same - I often click through the cross-post menu to read all the comments for a thread, but combining them would be problematic.
Unless they were sequentially after one another, but then you’d still want a cross-post type of menu to jump to one, and once there to jump to the next… and so on. Meh, it could be done, but it’s not really a priority for me compared to other things.
I’ve just done the merging comments idea. Check this out for an example - https://piefed.social/post/555259
@cabbage@piefed.social
Dividing it under different headlines helps address my reservations!
I’m still somewhat worried it could lead to accidential off-topic discussions, as the same link could take on different meaning in different communities.
Maybe responses in other communities could be collapsed by default, so that users never accidentally participate in a discussion in the “wrong” community? Or maybe I worry for no good reason.
In either case it looks really good and I look forward to seeing it around on piefed! :)
Yes I’m concerned about that too. So far the only thing I can think of is to add a “Rules” link right after the community headline, which would display the community sidebar text (where Lemmy communities often-but-not-always have their rules).
In PieFed communities have two separate sidebar fields - one for the community description and another for the community rules. So we can do a better job of finding the rules for those communities although they are very few at the moment.
Neither of these address instance-specific rules which can actually be more important a lot of the time…
It’s a tricky one.
That’s great! I did a test edit and everything is looking functional. As you say the rules issue raises concerning points - perhaps the desktop could be made nice but then how will a mobile device handle it, etc. Lots to think about there.:-)
I think instance-specific rules are largely ignored anyway - we don’t really check the home. Instance of communities and go there to read their rules before posting. If it’s clear which community you’re posting to and the rules of that community are visible, I’d say that’s plenty. :)