Two Approaches to Solving the “Quiet Fediverse” Problem: Conversation Backfilling Mechanisms

https://hackers.pub/@hongminhee/2025/quiet-fediverse-two-approaches/en

20 points · 10 comments · view on lemmy.world

10 Comments

freamon@preferred.social · 5 pts · 1y

I'd be wary of getting a conversation node from anybody other than the original author (as described in the second approach).

There's a reason why, if you want to resolve a missing post in Lemmy, etc, you have to use the fedi-link to retrieve it from its source, not just from any other instance that has a copy (because, like the "context owner", they could be lying).

For Group-based apps, conversation backfill is mostly an issue for new instances, who might have a community's posts (from its outbox), but will be missing old comments. Comments can be automatically and recursively retrieved when they are replied to or upvoted by a remote actor, but fetching from the source (as you arguably should do) is complicated by instances closing (there's still loads of comments from feddit.de and kbin.social out there - it will be much worse when lemm.ee disappears). So perhaps Lemmy could also benefit from post authors being considered the trusted owner of any comments they receive.

INeedMana@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y (7 replies)

I think that the problem is not with propagation, but that we don't get notifications about other comments under a post we commented on.

What's more, if this comment gets an answer, and then someone will comment that answer, I will not be informed of that branch of discussion

Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 1y (6 replies)

Have you tried the "New comments" sort?

INeedMana@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y (5 replies)

I mean the notification about new, unread message. Sort won't solve that, I observe too many communities

Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 1y (4 replies)

Piefed has more granular notifications. Voyager is also recently supported

!piefed_meta@piefed.social

INeedMana@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y (3 replies)

I'll check Voyager out, thanks. But still, I suspect most of Lemmy uses the default UI

Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 1y (2 replies)

The Piefed web UI is similar to Lemmy. As usual, people have options

INeedMana@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y (1 reply)

Somehow I haven't encountered piefed yet. Does it have an option to group the communities one follows? So I could see not only posts in communities I subscribed to, but also only from the ones I've put in, for example, "news" group?

Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 1y

Exactly, it has feeds (so what your describe), that can be private or public

tastemyglaive@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 1y

I have heard the reasons why, but I still can't wrap my head around Mastodon's decisions regarding the ability of reactions to carry between instances & profile search. The solution to a problem should never be "scroll for 7 minutes". All of the instances still doing that should move on, because the whole "dopamine loop" neuroscience meme is nothing confirmed or worth breaking core site features over.