this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023
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tl;dr: I fully agree with you that there's room for improvement here, but I can't for the life of me decide on a solution I actually like lmao.
Yeah, it's definitely going to be common while the masses settle on which community/instance they want to emphasize.
The question for now is, how do you think this should actually be handled? What counts as identical links? There's several factors that can change, and that makes handling the problem much more complicated than it initially seems.
In your example, it's 1) the same user posting 2) the same link with 3) the same title to 4) different communities. That does seem like basic reposting, and it would initially seem like we should just combine them and have it say "[USER], 10 hours ago posted to [Community1], [C2], [C3], etc"
But each of those communities and each of those instances may abide by different rules. It would definitely be a disservice to each community to pile all the discussion threads into one communal comment section.
So.... I guess if it's 4) a different community, then it's okay to have 'duplicate' threads? Uh oh.
I have a feeling that same argument would apply to veryyy similar threads with 1) different users, 2) different links to the same content, or 3) different titles. So what the heck, how do we improve this situation?? What are we even asking for??
Tabs on the comment page, before the comments, that you use to select the instance.
An extra "+ 2 other instances" text on a post that reveals the other instances on hover/click.
@Mallard Tabs! That's not bad! It's gonna confuse new people for a bit, but they're already confused lol.
And I guess we just choose which ones are the main display and which get demoted to "+ 2 others" by using the sort option? Top Hot New?
Okay, actually thinking this through more, I think this plus Mallard's tabs may be the best way to start! Display the version of a link that best suits the sort option, stack the rest. Maybe let them be unstacked in the feed (like how reddit comments work lol), so you can still look at the other titles easily.
That's really promising! Okay, someone please poke holes in this plan lol.
If you think about the OF creators literally posting the same image in 100 different subs, you'll see that there's a practical limit to the number of tabs that will display.
Instead, I'm thinking that a text link-list of all the subs (with instances shown) it's been posted to is easier to manage. Then whichever one you click brings you to the localized comments page for that thread.
If you do it that way, then you can have a user configuration setting as to whether the link list is shown fully on each thread listing or whether there's a "+" button to expand it out.
@McBinary @Mallard
Ah sheet, that's a good point. I was thinking, surely the most constrained factors is number of communities. Nope, 'cause the OF creator posts to 100 communities, and their fans seem very likely to subscribe to a lot of those communities lmao.
@ShadowRunner What are you imagining would be the title that we see on /all or whatever feed?
Default Condensed/Expanded is a good user setting, we should definitely keep that lol.
Ah, that's an excellent point.
The irony is that the worst cases of shared links are from OF creators - but they bot-blast those links, so they all have the exact same title. That makes it easy - if every duplicate link has the same title, then just use that.
But for cases where they have different titles, you would either have to choose a generic system-generated title or alternatively, use the title of the instance that has the greatest engagement.
All of these questions, however, can be designed to be user-selectable in each of our own settings. That way, a person can decide whether or not they even want to stack duplicates, and if so, how is the title chosen.
@shepherd
@Mallard
Yeah, that's a great idea. It might also allow for future moderation to add stragglers into the same post even like a reddit megathread.
@shepherd Yeah I'm not sure of an appropriate solution either.
These may not even need to be merged, but maybe there is a way to just display one thread and link all identical links as a "cross-post" within the thread? That way we're just seeing a single aggregated link without a bunch of spam? Something like this:
That's not bad, but that's only the solution for Identical 1) User 2) Link 3) Title, but Different 4) Community. I'm not opposed to implementing it, or something like it! It's definitely a step in the right direction, but it's not complete.
What if it's Identical 2) Link, but Different 1) User 3) Title 4) Community?? Basically, a bunch of different people post the same link to different communities, and they alll write a different title lmao. Basically the exactly same "spam" problem, harder to stack.
I don't really think we should do a whole grid of the different people posting different titles to different communities lmao.
(Don't even get me started on 2) Different Links to the same content hahah)
Let me preface this comment with: I haven't written code in decades, so I'm not sure what is or is not possible. 😆
That being said, you're probably right about different links to the same content on different sites - but I don't understand why the same link from different users can't be flagged as the same content and aggregated as well?
I understand there is only so much that can be done on the backend to curb spam, the rest would likely have to be controlled through moderation. Maybe when significant events happen we can have moderators pin a "megathread" like /r/politics does where dozens of sites are running the same story?
@McBinary I think it's easier to describe the different users problem by comparing different titles first.
Obviously these are over the top examples, but this kind of difference can be incredibly important, especially when the differences in intent are subtle.
So which one do we display as the "main" title for the group? As it stands, we give them equal footing (which looks like spam), but pick your favourite controversial topic, and imagine that our stacking solution quickly decides that END OF TRUTH is the only title we really need to show lmao. All the others can just be piled into the "+ 7 others" stack.
We've basically chosen which narrative is the True Main Story, and which ones can be de-emphasized. Uh oh.
Now let's do that all over again, but it's two users. One user is the head of PoliticsA, the other is PoliticsB. They both post an article about their debate. Obviously they choose different titles as above, so the winner chooses the narrative.
But the OP gets emphasized in the comments too, so they get to spread their opinions a little better. Are we cool with most people only seeing the thread that pops off a little quicker?
Most viewers aren't going to go through the de-emphasized posts, it's obvious the main one is the one where all the activity is now. Many won't even notice the other guy posted it too, he's lost somewhere in the + 7 others threads lol.
Equal footing is fair, but ugly. If we smooth over the content, we lose more and more subtlety and eventually we lose details that actually do matter.
Messy, I know. I'm so sorry lol.
Maybe don't do it globally. I mean, is there one global truth? Maybe provide access to links for all communities/magazines to which there was a link, combine those as "related discussions" under a drop-down menu, but recommend, make the primary link, the appropriate magazine/community based on the subscriptions or viewing history of the user?
Otherwise, say Donald Trump runs and wins the 2024 presidential election in the US. A link to a story about it on CNN is submitted both to a Republican-favoring magazine and a Democratic-favoring magazine. The Republican guys are happy about it, the Democratic guys are unhappy about it. If you choose One Global Truth, you dump all the Republicans into the Democratic forum or vice-versa. Either of those options kind of sounds like a recipe for infighting and trouble. Would be better to try to direct the Republicans to the discussion on the Republican-favoring magazine and the Democrats to the discussion on the Democratic-favoring magazine.
So, like, maybe you rank the magazine priority based on how many times a user has viewed that magazine. I mean, if they enjoy reading that magazine, then presumably they'll keep going back and automatically expose their preferences as to where to read something.
I'm not sure that that's completely perfect -- like, I could imagine a situation where one has a general tech magazine and a more-specialist magazine dealing with a very specific piece of technology, where one uses the general tech magazine more but would prefer to see the magazine dealing with the particular technology in question if a link is submitted about that specific technology. But it seems like a reasonable heuristic to start with.
@tal I think you understand the concerns here! The devil's in the details, and it's annoyingly difficult to create a tidy aesthetic solution with acceptable consequences.
Ranking based on user preference is interesting, but I suspect it eventually escalates to creating another black box algorithm? Youtube / Instagram / TokTik / etc? There's a whooole rabbit hole here that could seem like it's helping at each step, but easily becomes a mess of relevant factors.
And don't forget that people are more likely to click stuff that makes them mad!
I kinda think this shouldn't be fediverse policy, it would probably be best to keep it to visible (public) actions like votes and boosts.
@shepherd Yikes! Okay I see your point. In that case the tabbed experience that @Mallard suggested sounds even better than it originally did. It would allow users to pick which instance to view from, and potentially that would even open up the option of users picking their preferred instance for display?
@McBinary Yeah, considering the whole point of the fediverse, finding an actually perfect solution is... like really hard? Tabs seem really promising! But this is why I ended that other reply with please poke holes in this plan lol, WHAT DID WE MISS THERE'S SO MUCH AT STAKE
A big issue with trying to merge is that some groups will have a completely different direction of discussion from the same topic. Especially with a political link to a news paper. You can't reasonably merge those conversations together.
I think the intention is to keep the disparate conversations in a single container that you can swap between, rather than merging those conversations together.
I can see that as an issue as well. Griefers could easily harass other groups by creating clone instances and then filling it with shit.
That is where the beauty of federation shines through. You just defederate that instance - or as a user just block the whole instance.
I think, maybe the change needs to happen in us lmao. Maybe, we should look at this as a feature, that lets us compare beehaw's responses vs lemmy's vs kbin vs any community or instance.
You can subscribe to all the communities to get different sides of the spectrum for a broader perspective.
Or maybe you only actually care for the responses from some communities (factors like content quality, quantity, political spectrum, etc) so you get to control exactly what you want to experience, and can unsubscribe accordingly.
@shepherd I fear that is easier said than done. I frequent /ALL most of the time, and new communities pop up pretty consistently. Unsubscribing from a seeming endless torrent of new instances and communities is tedious and probably futile in the long run. It would at least require a lot of constant curating to keep up with it.
If we were to aggregate identical links into a single thread with hyperlinks to the crossposts - it would allow much the same functionality without requiring each user to manually exclude large parts of the fedi.