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Can I comment on a thread on another instance if I'm not subscribed? (self.main)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by MathProf to c/main

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I found an active thread in a sub on another instance I'd like to participate in. When I sub to the thread from sh.itjust.works there are no comments; I assume that's because sh.itjust.works only starts syncing communities after the first subscription. So now I can either read the thread on an instance I don't have a login for, or participate in an empty version of the thread on sh.itjust.works.

Is there any way to participate in the active thread at this point? Thanks.

edit: Just checked my subscription to the new community is [pending]. Maybe that's it?

edit2: Thanks to @Barbarian I can at least sub to one of the pending communities, and the others are on lemmy.ml, so I'll just wait those out.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If another account on your server has already subscribed to the remote-comminity... then federation replicates it to your server even if YOU are not subscribed. In this case, you can visit the version of the community and its posts posts that are hosted on your instance, and comment/vote even if you're not subscribed.

If no one subs on your instance the post won get replicated to your instance in the first place, and you won't be able to comment/vote. If you subbed halfway through the posts lifetime, you'll be able to interact with new comments since your sub but old ones will be missing... which does feel surpassingly weird when it happens... but pragmatically it only lasts for a short while as new posts fill up the community timeline post-subscription and those have fully replicated.comment sections.

I'm not aware of a way to force your server to fetch the full comment chain of a post that predates anyone subscribing to the community to make federation kick it. Try searching your local instance for the post url, that jumpstarts community discovery. Maybe it also jumpstarts comment replication. If not though, I'm, out of ideas.

[–] MathProf 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I see, thanks. Yeah, that stinks. I'll say one of my favorite ways to use reddit has been to search for threads related to an interest of mine and join the discussion, whether or not I'm subscribed to the subreddit. It seems like that's not possible on Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Well it's not... like... consistently possible. There happens to be a bonkers amount of new community creation happening this very minute. In the steady state, you'd kind of hope to see that on a well-trafficked instance like sh.itjust.works that most subs have been subscribed for a while and so this all works pretty much as expected.

But a massive wave of new community creation where you're frequently on the leading edge disconcerting new communities and being the first to subscribe to them... yeah... that's the worst case scenario for this situation. It think it will improve with time, but it does suck mightily right this minute.