Automatic change of DW links to the according LJ (or other third party) links when crossposting

[schnurble]

Title:
Automatic change of DW links to the according LJ (or other third party) links when crossposting

Area:
crossposting, usability

Summary:
It would be nice if the crossposter could change links to DW entries into links to the according LJ (or other third party) entries.

Description:
Imagine you post an entry to your DW account and crosspost it also to LJ. This entry contains a link to another entry in your DW account. The crossposted entry will contain this link as well.
Because the LJ friendslist is seldom identical to the DW access list, some on LJ will be unable to see this linked entry on DW if it's access-locked.

But due to crossposting, the same entry is probably also on LJ and this one is visible for the LJ friends there, so I'd rather have the link in the entry on LJ point to the other entry on LJ instead of the one on DW.

At the moment, after crossposting, I go to LJ and manually change the link in the crossposted entry to point to the according LJ entry, but it would be nice if this could be done automatically (of course only in case the linked entry has such a counterpart on LJ).
Because not everyone would want this, this should be an option that can be activated/deactivated.

The biggest issue to make this happen is probably to determine which entry on LJ corresponds with which entry on DW, but this information should already be available, because when you change a crossposted entry on DW, the change will automatically be sent to LJ, and for this, the crossposter needs to know which entry there is the one to be updated.

Poll #1216 Automatic change of DW links to the according LJ (or other third party) links when crossposting

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 42

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
9 (21.4%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
13 (31.0%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
11 (26.2%)

(I have no opinion)
9 (21.4%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[zvi]

Just want to underline that I am only voting for this if it is an optional setting. I can greatly see the utility for people who are crossposting and taking comments on all sites, but for my own use, I really do not want.

[susanreads]

+1 (not that I have anywhere to crosspost to myself, but seeing how other people use it)

[turlough]

+1

[the_shoshanna]

Ditto.

[cesy]

+1

[eruthros]

+1

[syderia]

I agree that it should be optional.

[ciaan]

Definitely only as an optional setting.

[ancientsavvy]

+1

[thedivinegoat]

What zvi said.

[yvi]

I would love, love, love for this to be an option when importing. My Dreamwidth 'has access to:' and my LJ 'friends' page are almost nothing alike. When I go back to where the imported entries are, I can not click on the links and see something other than a 403 error for many accounts. Would be nice as an option, at least :)

[cesy]

+1

[ancientsavvy]

+1

[rustnroses]

While I understand this to be useful in reference to the Importer and less problematic in my mind than in terms of the crossposter - in terms of business method/model - I would seriously argue against this change. I understand people may not like that reasoning, but still makes it a questionable idea.

[yvi]

Why do you think so? Dreamwidth is striving for interoperability and this would be a great step towards that, in my mind. It also helps Dreamwidth, because this can go in both directions: I don't want to be linked to LJ on a Dreamwith post when there is a Dreamwidth post with the same content availeble, because I don't use LJ anymore.

[ariestess]

This would actually be a nice option to have. I crosspost pretty much everything and sometimes I hate having to go in and correct links. Some I don't much care, to be honest, but this would be a nice option...

[cheyinka]

I don't like the idea of this being automatic, and if there's no option to turn it off I would much rather it not happen. I do not want the crossposter guessing what I mean, in general. Also, I see a couple problems with implementing the idea, one of which I don't think is easily-solved if solvable at all.

"What if the linked post was not crossposted?" is the first issue that occurred to me, and is easily fixed.
If someone crossposts with comments turned off, linking to the comment-less post isn't very useful, and is more difficult to fix.
If someone is crossposting with comments turned on, and wants to make sure both (or however-many) sites see a post on Dreamwidth (perhaps so that everyone sees those comments), linking to the associated post on whatever other site is actively counter-productive. And since there's really no way to tell what someone means by linking to a post, there's no way for the crossposter to guess whether or not it should alter the link.