Looks like Mastodon is finally getting some built in functionality to fetch missing replies:
github.com/mastodon/mastodon/p…
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Add Fetch All Replies Part 1: Backend by sneakers-the-rat · Pull Request #32615 · mastodon/mastodon
Fix: #9409 Fix: #14017 Fix: #18150 Original PR Here: NeuromatchAcademy#44 Further description here: NeuromatchAcademy#43 I've never made a PR for upstream before, so forgive me if i'm doing...GitHub
Martin Vermeer FCD reshared this.
Michael
in reply to Michael • • •Several people have asked me whether this makes FediFetcher obsolete. I thought I'd put out a more public response to this question:
Unfortunately I don't think I can retire FediFetcher just yet, as it still has some utility:
Firstly, FediFetcher can fetch context proactively without having to expand posts. (Eg one of my favourite features of FediFetcher is that it pro-actively pulls in replies to posts in my home timeline. I personally wouldn't really want to miss out on this.)
Secondly, FediFetcher can also backfill profiles - something that Mastodon is still unable to do, and, as far as I can tell, has no intention of implementing.
Thirdly, it'll likely still be a while until these changes are available in any released versions, and likely even longer until 3rd party apps have support for it.
I do hope it’s the beginning of the end of FediFetcher, but imo we are not there just yet!
Obviously other users of FediFetcher may have different opinions, and if - once this is released - you personally are happy with Mastodon's built in ‘o
... Show more...Several people have asked me whether this makes FediFetcher obsolete. I thought I'd put out a more public response to this question:
Unfortunately I don't think I can retire FediFetcher just yet, as it still has some utility:
Firstly, FediFetcher can fetch context proactively without having to expand posts. (Eg one of my favourite features of FediFetcher is that it pro-actively pulls in replies to posts in my home timeline. I personally wouldn't really want to miss out on this.)
Secondly, FediFetcher can also backfill profiles - something that Mastodon is still unable to do, and, as far as I can tell, has no intention of implementing.
Thirdly, it'll likely still be a while until these changes are available in any released versions, and likely even longer until 3rd party apps have support for it.
I do hope it’s the beginning of the end of FediFetcher, but imo we are not there just yet!
Obviously other users of FediFetcher may have different opinions, and if - once this is released - you personally are happy with Mastodon's built in ‘on demand' context fetch, you should stop using FediFetcher to relieve pressure from your home instance.
#mastoadmin #fedifetcher
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Paul Chambers🚧
in reply to Michael • • •Michael
in reply to Paul Chambers🚧 • • •Paul Chambers🚧
in reply to Michael • • •Michael
in reply to Michael • • •LOL, so someone has been complaining somewhere that Mastodon doesn't respect the robots.txt when fetching replies here.
How do they imagine Mastodon would work, if it stopped federating with instances that block all UAs in their robots.txt?!
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Leon Cowle
in reply to Michael • • •@uastronomer Well, that someone doesn't understand the purpose of robots.txt then. It’s not meant to control user-initiated connections (direct or indirect) to your webserver.
(Though I will admit it gets a little ambiguous these days when folks ask AI chatbots for specific details and the AI chatbot tries to access a webserver in realtime [like some of them do] -- because that IS user-initiated, but the AI might then also ingest whatever it finds into its DB, and some folks don't want that.)
pieceofthepie
in reply to Michael • • •unfortunately the profile backfilling is becoming increasingly less useful as it (rightly) starts adhering to robots.txt and profile options.
Early versions filled out all my profiles, going by the logs I'd say I get about 50% of them now.
Don't get me wrong, it absolutely should follow the rules but it does hinder things somewhat.
Michael
in reply to pieceofthepie • • •yeah, I find the same with quite a lot of missing replies.
I’m personally still not convinced it should adhere to robots.txt. At least not to the
user-agent: *part, as it really doesn’t remotely behave or act like a bot. FediFetcher honouring this block is to me akin to Mastodon honouring it, which would be nonsense (and be an effective defederation from a large number of instances).But the community has spoken…
I actually wanted to do an analysis to see how prevalent blanket disallows are, and if any instances with blanket disallows make exceptions for FediFetcher for quite some time. I’ll see if I get around to it eventually…