wjs018

Is there a software solution on the app developer level that combines like posts together?

As mentioned in this thread already, piefed consolidates all the comments for crossposts when it detects them. As an example, you can look at this post on piefed.social. The link I shared is for the post on !news@lemmy.world, but below it you can see comments from the same article posted in !unitedkingdom@feddit.uk as well as !world@lemmy.world in their own sections as you keep scrolling. So, problem solved, right? Well…

One of the key phrases I used above is “when it detects them”. So, how does piefed detect crossposts? The answer is pretty simple, it basically just looks for other posts that point to the same destination url. In the example I linked, that would be the Guardian article that is being discussed. This is the same way that lemmy detects crossposts. This approach is nice and easy and computationally cheap on the database (quick), however, there is a big shortfall of this method…posts that don’t point to a url (discussion posts) can never be detected as crossposts. Lemmy offers the ability to hit the crosspost button on a discussion post and it will create a big block quote of the original post for you, but it isn’t actually recognized as a crosspost in the software.

I don’t have a good technical solution to be able to make discussion posts (and other non-url posts, like piefed events or polls) be crossposted properly. It likely would need to be tracked in the database somehow, but it would rely on users somehow indicating that the post they are making is meant to be a crosspost. I don’t know really…

Anyway, that is the current state of crossposts. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

Alright, after another user pointed it out to me, I suspect the reason you aren’t seeing links to the modlog is likely because you were on piefed.world. They have been slow to update their piefed instance and are still on the 1.1 version. That means that updates to piefed that have been introduced in 1.2 (current stable version) and 1.3 (current dev version) are not present. Some updates to the modlog since then:

• (1.2) searching and filtering the modlog if you are logged in
• (1.3) introducing a dedicated link to the modlog on the footer of every page
• (1.3) adding a link to the modlog on each community’s sidebar
• (1.3) adding a link to the modlog on a user’s profile page

I just added it there a couple days ago, so don’t feel like it’s always been there hiding under your nose. 😀

piefed.world is on an older version of piefed where that wasn’t added yet. Similarly, instances that are on older versions of piefed won’t have links to the modlog on a community’s sidebar or on a user profile’s dropdown.

I’m not sure what is holding up piefed.world from updating. They are still on the 1.1 branch when 1.2 has been stable for some time now and we are preparing 1.3 for release very soon.

Without being an admin you won’t be able to see the username of the mod that banned you. This is also true for lemmy.

It is in the dropdown on their user profile page. Putting it on every single post/comment feels like overkill to me. Or, I just use the modlog way less than most people.

It’s also linked in the footer of every page.

Not the person you are replying to, but I wouldn’t call it obscure, no. It’s getting used more and more in recent years and there are pushes to even use it for parts of the Linux kernel. However, it is a language that you wouldn’t be familiar with unless you are most likely a professional software engineer (or a very dedicated hobbyist).

One of the benefits of python is its relative ease of learning and readability make the codebase easier to understand and make contributions. I don’t work in software, but I have made numerous contributions to Piefed for features that I have wanted in lemmy, but I haven’t ever been able to wrap my head around rust.

Nothing against lemmy though. Their codebase is a couple years more mature, and since they develop api-first, it is more feature complete from a mobile app’s perspective. Piefed is developed web ui-first by comparison.