This is annoying. Comm names aren't unique and the user doesn't know which one they're posting to.

frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml to Lemmy@lemmy.ml – 99 points –
14

Yeah I’ve always thought the drop-down ought to be comm@hostname, so I’m not forced to pick one at random and then find out afterward whether I got lucky or I need to guess again.

yea normally this isn't an issue cause you post from the community's page so it's selected by default, but this is a real problem when crossposting

Don’t forget about the font. You sure it’s lreland not Ireland?

Seems like the specific issue is this:

  • If the community is on your local instance, it doesn't show the instance in the dropdown. If it's a remote instance, it does.

  • However instead of using the actual unique URL of the community, it uses the display name. So in this case lemmy.ml/c/ireland and lemmy.ml/c/ireland_on_lemmy both have their display name set to just "Ireland".

I think differentiating between local and remote communities is actually pretty useful but obviously the second thing is a problem when you've got competing communities on one server. Which I guess is a thing that people are doing.

Maybe instead of:

  • Ireland
  • Ireland

it should be showing

  • Ireland (/c/ireland)
  • Ireland (/c/ireland_on_lemmy)

which not only fixes this problem but also means you can see how to get to a community to go check it out before posting there (this comes up sometimes in the process of crossposting) and it'll stop, say, a mod giving their community an unrelated name to confuse people into posting something inappropriate or whatever.

There should probably also be a character limit on the display name because that UK one is obnoxiously taking up all of the horizontal space and leaving no room for its actual identifier.

Funny enough when checking modlogs the difference is highlighted basically just like that

I agree it should be that way for communities as well

This definitely needs to be fixed. For now I navigate to the community first and hit create post there.

The apps usually show the full names (including instance name), so I didnt even know this was an issue on lemmy-ui

Yeah its really annoying