Lemmy: Just a link aggregator? NO!

[LucasDondo]

When someone posts a link, you can't get into the post's comments, body and more info. That makes no sense.
Solution: Don't open the link just by touching the post's title!

[dessalines]

When someone posts a link, you can't get into the post's comments, body and more info. That makes no sense.

Yes you can. Just click comments.

[StaticallyTypedRice]

When someone posts a link, you can't get into the post's comments, body and more info. That makes no sense.
Solution: Don't open the link just by touching the post's title!

This is how Reddit works. Clicking on a title takes you to the link.

[Nutomic]

I think this is still a useful discussion to have, because its not clear if a link will take you to a discussion on Lemmy or to an external site. Sure Reddit also does it like this, but that doesnt automatically mean its a good idea. It would be good if we could make this more obvious somehow.

[LucasDondo]

When someone posts a link, you can't get into the post's comments, body and more info. That makes no sense.
Solution: Don't open the link just by touching the post's title!

This is how Reddit works. Clicking on a title takes you to the link.

That doesn't mean that's how this SHOULD be like. Big companies also can be wrong.

[richardj]

Personally i don't like this, or what Reddit does. But that is a personal opinion. What could be done is that with an external link you add an 'external link symbol' to the title, visually telling the user that.

https://image.flaticon.com/icons/svg/25/25284.svg

[dessalines]

Personally i don't like this, or what Reddit does. But that is a personal opinion. What could be done is that with an external link you add an 'external link symbol' to the title, visually telling the user that.

At first, I had it exactly like that, but a lot of ppl complained that when they were clicking the link, it wouldn't actually go to the link, just the comments, and that symbol was harder to find.

[dessalines]

One thing I would consider, is making the comments button not text-muted, but look like a link. It wouldn't be as clean looking, but might be more clear.

I really don't like that either tho, because then the other links wouldn't stand out as the color for a user and sub link.

[richardj]

What Reddit does right now it seems, is that links go to the discussion page (or comment page), and it will show the link / source beneath it.

This would help with two things:

1. you can always go directly to the source
2. you can always go directly to the comments.

[dessalines]

Hrm, I do have that simplified URL go to the real link, I suppose I could have the main one always go to the comments. But someone complained about that originally so I have no way to gauge which one is more preferred.

[richardj]

Maybe start it off simple and go from there, you could run and implement A/B testing software to see which one is more preferred, or it can become a setting at some point.

For now maybe having the user choose from the overview what they want (title goes to comments, link, if applicable shown beneath that) is at least in that way standardized.

[dessalines]

Okay, for now I'll change it to always going to comments.

[Nutomic]

Reopening this because its a useful discussion to have. I will also rename the "question" label to "discussion".

[StaticallyTypedRice]

One suggestion: Place an outgoing icon on all outgoing links, Wikipedia does this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:External_link_icons#Example (See the example links column)

[Nutomic]

@StaticallyTypedRice Its not the most beautiful icon, but I agree that it would help to clarify the behaviour. We should give it a try.

[StaticallyTypedRice]

@StaticallyTypedRice Its not the most beautiful icon, but I agree that it would help to clarify the behaviour. We should give it a try.

I don't think we can use the WIkipedia one, but I'm sure there are Creative Commons icons we can use. Maybe import an icon set like FontAwesome while we're at it.

[dessalines]

That's easy enough to add.