Allowing people to easier link to/reference posts in their own posts

[supertux88 (Benjamin Neff)]

@comradesenya

I think that we actually need embedding previews for referenced posts. Otherwise it won’t feel like we have implemented “reshares with own notes” or “private reshares”. Linking posts is actually possible right now using links without hostname text, and without the preview it doesn’t feel like anything similar to reshare. I can imagine someone will still want to use “weird userscripts” if we don’t implement proper embedding for linked post.

I agree with senya here, the original/linked/referenced post should be embedded similar to how it currently is with reshares.

@denschub

How do we display references if there is more than one referenced post?

I think we should do it the same way as we do it for youtube link, or any other link: Only embed the first referenced post.

@denschub

maybe opening a popup with “Just copy this link to your post”.

In my opinion that wouldn’t feel like a finished solution again. I think opening a popup with the publisher with already the link in it is better. People can still copy/paste the link to another publisher where they already wrote text or when they don’t like to write the post in a popup.

@denschub

What happens if someone uses markdown to link to a post? How do we display it?

That shouldn’t be a problem, at least normal diaspora:// links should work with markdown like http:// links do. It needs to be discussed/decided if we only embed it when the link is on it’s own line. When we only embed it when it’s on it’s own line we can maybe also embed it inplace (like discourse does it when you post a link that is “oneboxed”). That would also solve the problem when somebody posts multiple links.

@denschub

How do we inform the user that a reference will be made?

By displaying the embedded post in the preview? Or what do you mean?

@denschub

Should we offer a way to disable that on a per-post basis? If so, how would this look like?

I don’t understand that question? You mean if we should disallow to link to a post? Or if the author who references a post should disable if it’s embedded? I don’t think we can disallow to link to something.

@denschub

How do we decide whether to show the contents or not in case of someone linking a private post?

I think that’s simple, just check if the current user is allowed to see the linked post?

@flaburgan

Spread was about the clean reshare without like or comment.

I think we should just call the “spread” case “reshare”, because that’s what it is, and that’s what people already know?

@flaburgan

What about Quote?

For the new case: If we use diaspora:// links then I think “reference” is OK.

I also thought about using a new message for federating it, that would be similar to the current reshare message. I would have used “quote” then. But that would be much less flexible than diaspora:// links. You could only quote one post, and add a text to it. The only advantage of this would be, that it’s much easier to migrate legacy reshares (with comments and likes) to them, because it would really be similar.

But when using diaspora:// links I think we can just convert all legacy reshares to status messages and set the text to just the link to the original post.