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Should Mastodon users be able to create threads on Lemmy? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 years ago by nutomic@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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There have been some requests to make it possible for Mastodon users to create threads on Lemmy. At the moment this is not possible because Mastodon cant set the title field which is mandatory in Lemmy. The same problem affects other projects like Pleroma or Friendica (where title is optional).

It is unlikely that Mastodon would make any change in this regard, so a workaround in Lemmy would be necessary. I implemented such a workaround which makes the title optional when receiving a federated post, and uses the first line of the content instead. This workaround could also be made configurable per instance or per community.

But to be honest I am not sure the workaround is a good idea in general, as it could result in bad titles, and generally more low-quality posts. Thats why I want to know what the community thinks about it.

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[–] 0x1C3B00DA@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I think it's a good idea. I don't see any reason to limit which posts are available based on the presence/absence of simple fields. That's just a UI problem and using the first sentence (up to a certain character limit) as a title is a good solution. Savvy microblog users could even write their posts specifically for lemmy by writing a title and adding a newline, obviating the need for custom code in microblog software or lemmy

EDIT: Another reason in favor of this proposal just came to me. Mastodon has group support on their roadmap, but my worry is their team won't look at prior art and make their group support compatible with existing Group implementations. If Lemmy allows external users to create post to its groups, mastodon users may start actively posting to lemmy groups. Then the users would expect any native mastodon group implementation to be compatible with what they're already using.