How do I *properly* link to a post?
So I know about /c/[email protected] for communities and /u/[email protected] for users, but how do I link to individual posts in a way that won't be a hassle for people in other instances?
View original on lemmy.world
So we've figured out what the rainbow and regular link icons do. But that doesn't answer OP's question.
I've tried linking with just the
/post/<ID>, linking with/post<ID>@<instance>, and no luck so far. This must be possible somehow!Seems like its not yet, theres a github issue discussing adding the feature
Curses! Thanks for the share, will keep an eye on that.
it ought to be something simple like
/p/<ID>Problem is posts have a different ID on each instance they federate to. It's a bit of a bugger.
It seems dumb to me that the fediverse doesn't use UUIDs
Yeah I wonder if the logic is that since instances don't know about each other (until, of course, they do) it would be possible to have duplicate IDs betwixt them so would be inherently unreliable. Idk, hopefully all of this gets sorted out by someone way smarter than me.
UUIDs are a computer science concept where you use some math and some black magic to guarantee that you have generated a unique identifier, even in an environment with federation. This concept predates the fediverse since this is needed for lots of different use-cases. Basically anything with horizontal scaling, orchestration, or p2p needs something like this in order to prevent collisions.
I'm case it's useful, there's a discussion on linking here: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/36299
I don't think there's any single answer yet though.
I think that's what the fediverse icon does (the rainbow hexagonal one) so for your post for example it would be https://lemmy.world/post/94456
As I understand it, the fediverse icon links to the home instance for the community the post was made on. I don't think there's currently a mechanism to link a post in a way that consistently resolves to the user's home server's version so they can vote and be logged in while viewing it.
If I click on the fediverse icon on your post I get carried to lemmy.blahaj.zone though. I wanted to link it inside the users' current instance like /c/ and /u/ do.
Next to that fediverse icon is a regular hyperlink icon, that should take you to where you wanna go, but on your own instance.
If I right-click copy it, it brings me to https://lemmy.world/comment/128943. It isn't what I want, I want a way to bring others into this post but inside their own instances.
Someone here please correct me if im wrong, but I dont think its possible yet. I just found this github issue discussing adding this feature
But then wouldn't that be the default link on the post title?
I don't even see that icon on posts (desktop, web), only on comments. So now I'm even more confused! :D
Update to my own confusion:
You see the rainbow icon on posts that aren't from your home instance. This icon takes you to the full original URL of that post on the remote instance.
The regular chain link icon on comments does indeed give you a link to a comment via your home instance. But that's no good if you're trying to link it agnostically for everyone else.
It is of a little bit good. You can copypaste that address into the search of your own instance and you'll get the link you actually need.
Ahhh I was wondering what that was for, thank you
Likely there is no way yet. Even the clean way to link back to your instance will throw an error, if the previous connection was not yet made.
Think you ended up in a different thread to where you intended, fyi.
Yep. Not sure how that happened.
It's possible to get a post on your local instance by searching the URL for the post on instance it was posted from (the link from the rainbowy button in lemmy's UI), it would be nice to have some automatic link rewriting, when a post contains such a link.
Unless it already does that? https://lemmy.world/post/94456
That link crashed jerboa.
I deleted it moments after posting because I realised it wasnt what op was asking so idk how you saw it lol. As for the crashing, I also use jerboa and the instance agnostic links crashing it seem to be a bug
Just FYI, I still see your comment, so it may not be as deleted as you think it is.
it sort of works, in the sense that it links to the same URL format of "[your instance]/c/[email protected]"
Problem is, the Threadiverse's link formats aren't consistent. I'm on Fedia.io, a Kbin instance, and that gives me an error because our communities are on /m/ instead.