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Why are communities on Lemmy.ml more full compared to the same on a different Lemmy instance? (self.asklemmy)
submitted 2 years ago by bryan to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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For example, I’m on Lemmy.sdf.org and I joined the Apple@lemmy.ml community. But there are many missing articles and comments. If I browse directly on Lemmy.ml for the same article there ~90% of comments are missing.

https://lemmy.ml/post/1152794 has 26 comments https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/11232 has 0 comments

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[-] MyopicTopic@lemmy.ml 15 points 2 years ago

Pretty sure it doesn't "take a while" for things to sync up. Once an instance is discovered by another, any posts from that point forward will appear, but anything made before then will not. I have personally seen new instances sync with kbin.social that have less comments than if you look at the main instance's thread. They have added more comments, but only new ones made after it was discovered.

Whether I'm right or not, I'm not sure. Would have to hear from the devs to know for sure, but from all I've seen there is no syncing of archived or historical postings, just discovery of and acceptance of new data from other instances.

[-] nude@kbin.social 6 points 2 years ago

This is my understanding as well, after using a number of different instances over the last few months.

I believe this issue will mostly sort itself out in the future as the federated network becomes more "connected"

A new instance connecting to an existing one will have content from the established instance missing, but as time goes on that content becomes a smaller portion of the overall content.

I anticipate some development on this issue in the near future anyway, perhaps cached content that is able to be "pushed" to a requesting instance.

[-] MyopicTopic@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

Yeah it's still definitely an issue considering there will be plenty of old topics that people will want to search and refer back to, and any new instance or people making their own will be SOL if they come in years later after communities have been posting for a while.

[-] sunaurus@lemm.ee 14 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

This could mean that syncing is in progress between these two instances. In that case, if you check back in a bit, you should see all the comments.

Edit: just to clarify, I am speculating here - I'm still learning how it all works myself

[-] Wintermute@lemmy.villa-straylight.social 5 points 2 years ago

Comments from before the first user subscribes simply do not sync. An instance only gets comments made after at least one user subscribes to a community.

[-] eric5949@beehaw.org 2 points 2 years ago

That seems kinda weird.

[-] Wintermute@lemmy.villa-straylight.social 3 points 2 years ago

Yeah, I think it will change eventually, but there are some issues that make it hard to fix right away. Lemmy is basically beta software written by two guys that has been thrust into the spotlight by current events. There are going to be some growing pains, but I have hope that things will improve with time.

[-] vaultshriek 1 points 1 year ago

@mini crossword I believe certain instances have been affected by server overload. It could be impacting not just the user interaction timeouts but also the synchronization across instances.

[-] sunspider@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

I think there might be more going on as the post in question is 4 days old, and all the comments are at least 1 day old; is the syncing typically days behind? The federated version that OP links shows 0 comments, and the version on my instance has just 5 comments.

Is it to do with when a user on the remote instance first interacted with the post? I.e, its only showing comments from after someone on lemmy.sdf.org first interacted with the post?

[-] bryan 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

your replay came quickly… so syncing seems to be working. If something doesn’t get synced is it retried again later? A good chunk of comments are missing across many posts. 😔

[-] annenas@beehaw.org 2 points 2 years ago

Would you mind elaborating on this a bit or linking to documentation that explains this in more detail? It seems that unless I visit any thread on its own instance, I'm not getting the actual number of upvotes and/or comments. Waiting and checking back doesn't seem to solve it (double checked on a post I checked about 4 hours ago, still can't see the full thing), so maybe it helps if I know what's going on exactly.

[-] bryan 9 points 2 years ago

Yeah on Lemmy.sf.org the Apple@Lemmy.ml community has most comments missing. But stuff like Memes@Lemmy.ml seem to be synced better. Maybe there wasn't subscribers for Apple community until I subscribed? So now it is just slowly starting to sync up? If so how long does it take and how many days back will it got to fetch comments?

[-] caio@lemmy.fdvrs.xyz 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

To add another example here, I saw the same behavior on this post: https://lemmy.ml/post/1136642. Right now it has 43 comments on lemmy.ml but over on my instance (link) there's only 18.

It's also unclear to me why some posts are not showing up, since the new ones (4h ago) appear, some old ones (7d ago) too, but some in the middle (6d, 5d ago) do not, which doesn't really make sense...

[-] Datsourdo@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago

I think it's because of the server overload some instances have been suffering. It might be affecting sync between instances in addition to the timeouts for user interaction.

[-] bryan 1 points 2 years ago

if there is overloading going on then there should be retrying. Seems that this isn’t happening or the retries are so late it ruins usability.

[-] bryan 2 points 2 years ago

Yeah this is pretty frustrating especially being it seems this asklemmy community is working fine…? Hard to grasp what’s going on with comments. 😕

[-] annenas@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago

Yep. For me it also matters whether I'm using my beehive account or my feddit.nl (much smaller instance) account. Guess it's just part of the federated part, but it's a bit annoying all the same

[-] Kichae@kbin.social 14 points 2 years ago

There could be several reasons for this, depending on what exactly you mean.

When the first person on an instance to subscribe to a remote community does so, the local mirror of that community starts receiving posts and comments from the original. But older posts and comments are not retrieved. You're only getting stuff going forward.

So, if you're talking about an instance that is much younger than Lemmy.ml, it'll have only a small fraction of the backlog.

On the other hand, if what you're seeing is that new comments and posts aren't reliably showing up, we'll, that's likely an issue of the server hosting the community being absolutely fucking destroyed by traffic right now.

[-] bryan 1 points 2 years ago

In my example the post is ~4 days old and the comments are as recent as a day ago. I can see the post on my instance but zero comments.

Are all posts synced but not comments if I’m the first to subscribe to a community on my instance?

[-] bryan 7 points 2 years ago

Just to add... It is really not true to be told it doesn't matter what instance I'm on when in fact it seems that it really does matter if I'm interesting in participating in comments (or just reading them).

[-] RoaringSilence@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago

Well, you CAN participate, subscribe and read the community of another instance. You don't have to be part of the other instance to do so.

Just make sure you are browsing / searching all and not just local.

I am reading and writing this from kbin and not even Lemmy btw.

[-] bryan 1 points 2 years ago

I’m aware of how it should work. But click the two links above.

Since I originally posted this thread only 3 comments are newly visible on my local fedi while the origin fedi (Lemmy.ml) still has 26 comments. So it took over a day to sync 3 comments made days ago? 🤨

What’s frustrating is not all communities are this out of sync. AskLemmy is staying pretty close to immediately synced. Other communities (on same origin server) can be more behind.

[-] dom@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 years ago

If you are the first to subscribe to one from another region, it takes a while for comments to sync. Once it does, you can read and comment to your heart's content.

[-] Wintermute@lemmy.villa-straylight.social 4 points 2 years ago

It doesn't take a while for comments to sync. Comments from before the first user subscribes simply do not sync.

[-] dom@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 years ago

Understood. The first user to subscribe may see it take a whole for the comments to sync.

That was my experience.

[-] EnglishMobster@sunny.garden 1 points 2 years ago

You can interact/reply to people from anywhere in the Fediverse.

For example - this is my Mastodon account. I can see your post and reply to it just fine, from Mastodon.

[-] BrooklynMan@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

check your language setting in your profile. make sure you have "Undefined" selected along with "English", then reload.

[-] bryan 4 points 2 years ago

I have "Undetermined" and "English" selected. There is no change to the comment count if I keep adding languages.

[-] phase_change@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 years ago

But, that should only matter when viewing via a logged in server. Those two links are to communities directly on servers. I suppose it’s possible no one on lemmy.sdf.org has subscribed to that community. That could explain the original question but doesn’t explain the example posted by @caio@sh.itjust.works example of https://lemmy.ml/post/1136642 vs https://lemmy.fdvrs.xyz/post/1436

(How do I get a link to reference a comment that works everywhere?)

[-] BrooklynMan@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I'm sorry, i don't know enough about lemmy yet to answer that. my advice about the language settings was what an admin told me when I had similar problems, and it worked for me. if it hasn't solved your problem, then I guess it's something else.

sorry I couldn't help more

[-] phase_change@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 years ago

No problem. You’ve probably been here longer than me. We’re all trying to figure this out. The question reveals issues I wasn’t aware of. You actually mentioned something that would be relevant in some situations that taught me something. I was just pointing out that I didn’t think your suggestion applied here.

All of us Reddit refugees are trying to figure out the nuances. I appreciate your comment because it taught me something new.

[-] BrooklynMan@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago

it's worth mentioning that changing your language setting may not have an immediate effect. it could take a but for the server to update, especially considering that it's under a very heavy load right now.

[-] phase_change@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 years ago

But again, that’s if you are viewing the community via the server you are subscribed to. For me, that would be https://sh.itjust.works/c/apple@lemmy.ml for the community and https://sh.itjust.works/post/8299 for the direct link. I just see 5 posts, which is less than either the original or the server OP is on.

My language settings shouldn’t matter when viewing servers I’m not logged in with. I do have both English and Undefined checked and only see 5 posts on that thread in sh.itjust.works.

[-] Alkalyon@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 years ago

Because lemmy.ml is the official instance meaning it was created by the developers of the people who created the backend for lemmy as well so people assume it would be the correct one to join.

Thankfully fediverse doesn't work like that and in a few days I expect users to be spread around in instances more evenly.

[-] Geometric7792@kbin.social 2 points 2 years ago

That doesn't really make sense though - shouldn't comments be federated across all communities?

[-] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

They do. However, it's only after federation has been established between two communities.

After a while, these newer communities will be federated in and everyone will be connected.

As lemmy.ml is the oldest community, it also has the most history (as the newer instances don't currently get the history).

This will likely be fixed at some point.

[-] phase_change@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 years ago

The person you are replying to deleted the comment. That said, as I understand it, comments are federated once someone on a server subscribes. So, not all comments will be federated. However, stuff listed in the comments here would seem to break my understanding of how federation works. I’m very curious to hear the answers.

[-] oilumiun12 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

The network effect plays a role in the popularity and activity of communities. As more users join and engage with communities on Lemmy.ml, it becomes more attractive for others to join as well, creating a positive feedback loop Like Fnaf

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this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2023
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