21 points
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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??

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12 points

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.

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3 points
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@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.

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3 points

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.

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2 points

@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.

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4 points
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@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:

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2 points

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)

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1 point

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?

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1 point

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.

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1 point
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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.

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2 points

@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.

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17 points

This is the same problem with people posting their porn to a million subreddits and communities

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7 points

@Falmarri Right, it would tremendously cut down on porn spam too if all the same links aggregated to a single thread as well.

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2 points

I think most of the accounts that do that on reddit are karma farming bots.

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4 points

As the fedi grows, I’m seeing a lot of identical links posted in several different places; instances and communities on the same instances.

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3 points

A mega-thread?

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2 points

For starters, BrikoX should just stop doing that, and only post in one community. People interested in it will see it (like you do now). If he/she is reputation farming, then this is also not beneficial to him/her. Because this way there is less interaction on the topic, as it is now fractured.

There are more technical ways to implement something like others have mentioned, but this will not be easy and is currently not a priority. I’d say, put it in the backlog and built something for it in due time. There are so many scenario’s to manage when for example creating a bundled thread and showing cross posts. The first challenge being identifying the duplicates. Because it will not just be one user posting, nor are the users necessarily linked (e.g. This could be BrikoX@beehaw, BrikoX@lemmy, etc…).

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