Someone gives you a link, or you find it in search
You click on the link, because that's what you do with links
It takes you to what you are looking for, but it says you have to log in to comment or vote
You log in so you can comment or vote

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.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] cerevant 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] vegetaaaaaaa 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The tooltip doesn't help either - both links only have a tooltip that just says link... IMHO it should be Link to this comment on CURRENT_INSTANCE_DOMAIN for the chain icon thing, and Link to this comment on COMMENTER_INSTANCE for the rainbow thing.

Anyway, the issue about this messy behavior described by @[email protected] is here https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/1048

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Oh good, it should be coming in 0.18.2. Nice.