this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
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Literally every single explanation of Lemmy or fediverse that I have seen makes this really clear. I don't understand where people would get the idea that you have to sign up to every site.
It is really clear until a newb tries to use it:
The UX for interacting with off-instance subs is abysmal. What is even worse is that as far as I can tell, there is no way to link a post or comment that is instance relative / instance independent.
I'm commenting mainly as a reminder to myself to check back later if someone comes in with a correction.
That said, the answer to this in the long term should be for the front ends (Lemmy UI, Jerboa, Sync for Lemmy, etc.) to be smart about this. My Mastodon app, Megalodon, does it. If you click a link to a post in another instance, it automatically looks up the same post from your instance and takes you there. It's a little slower (and Megalodon shows you a button to short-circuit it and just go to that URL if you don't care to be on your instance), but it lets you interact with the post as normal.
Even at the most basic level it is broken - at the bottom of your comment is a "context" button with the fediverse symbol. If I click on it, it won't take me to the comment on my instance (lemmy.world) but instead is an absolute link to the comment on your instance (Aussie.world) even though the community lives on lemmy.world.
I love lemmy, and I think it has a bright future, but this fundamental problem really needs to be fixed.
You're probably looking at the rainbow pentagon button, which behaves as you describe. There's also a kind of chain link button. That one should take you to the context within your own instance. At least on web that's how it works. Different apps may display differently.
The tooltip doesn't help either - both links only have a tooltip that just says
link... IMHO it should beLink to this comment on CURRENT_INSTANCE_DOMAINfor the chain icon thing, andLink to this comment on COMMENTER_INSTANCEfor the rainbow thing.Anyway, the issue about this messy behavior described by @cerevant@lemmy.world is here https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/1048
Oh good, it should be coming in 0.18.2. Nice.
Because when you click a link out of link Google or something you try to login and it says your login doesn't work. To actually view that page properly you have to copy the link go you home instance and search it again then go to the post and then you can interact with it. Some people either A. don't realize that or B. Don't understand that's how it all functions. It confused the shit out of me for the first couple days but I just didn't care enough to create a new account because my account "should" have worked there I just didn't know how to make that happen.
The process to open a link on your home instance is just way too complicated right now. Some sort of browser presence could help redirect users to the right places.
Agreed I haven't spent much time using Lemmy on an app but I'm hoping those can make it easier somehow atleast for mobile users.
It seems like it could be as easy as a redirect in Apache/nginx so that local-format links are laundered through.
And now we know how the Fediverse got all that users in the last period 😆