Option to split entries that are too long for crossposting into multiple entries

[eosrose]

Title:
Option to split entries that are too long for crossposting into multiple entries

Area:
crossposting

Summary:
DW is absolutely awesome for allowing entries to run significantly longer than LJ, but this causes problems when you want to crosspost an entry (especially when it's an entry that you'll need to update regularly, like a recs list or an index of some kind) because crossposting won't work. So I propose that a tag be created to mark where an entry should be split into mulitple posts when crossposting to sites that don't allow so many characters in a single entry.

Description:
The Problem: We cannot crosspost entries to sites with a smaller character limit per entry than DW.

Proposed Solution: Provide the option to split an entry into multiple posts on the site being crossposted to.

Caveats:
- We can't just split up a post after a certain number of characters unless we want to run into issues where we cut off right in the middle of words, etc. So we would have to create some sort of cut-tag to be manually inserted where the user wants a new entry to start.
- A suffix of some kind would have to be added to the end of the subject to indicate that the entry is, for instance, Part 1/3.
- The separate entries should automatically link to one another.

Implementation: I have a feeling that this might be pretty complicated to implement, possibly even eat up resources(?). I would advise making it a paid feature. (I would totally purchase a paid account to have this option.)

Poll #6968 Option to split entries that are too long for crossposting into multiple entries

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 56

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
18 (32.1%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
7 (12.5%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
6 (10.7%)

(I have no opinion)
20 (35.7%)

(Other: please comment)
5 (8.9%)

Comments

[msilverstar]

I think the problem is real, but trying to manage multiple posts on another system seems quite complex and fragile.

A much cheaper solution would be a character limit warning when cross-posting.

[the_shoshanna]

+1

[kerravonsen]

+1

This could be an interim solution, at least.

[ariestess]

+1

[turlough]

+1

[azurelunatic]

Or a linkback with preset text indicating that the entry is too long?

[arethinn]

+1

[kyrielle]

A character limit warning, with a message to your inbox showing where in the post you hit that limit.

Add a tag that allows you impose a "cut-off" on the remote post.

User can then insert the <remote-cut> tag at that spot and on the remote sites it would insert "..." and end there on the remote site.

Bonus if you could do <remote-cut site="livejournal.com"> since if cross-posting extends to more site types in the future, the length limits might be different. The un-edited remote-cut tag would apply to all sites not already cut by that point in the post.

[schneefink]

+1

[healingmirth]

I don't know what the behavior is now - does it just fail, or is the entry truncated on crosspost?

[denise]

It fails, with a "post too long" error.

[justhuman]

This would be an incredibly valuable feature, but it seems like solutions would be difficult to implement. It's not just LJ that folks crosspost too, so DW would need to know the limits on multiple sites. Then the other problem that those sites could change the posting limits.

Perhaps something more manageable would be a new field for each user to put in limit that they would like a warning about, with a marker in the post.

In principle, I love the idea of DW managing one post on DW connected to multiple post on the other site - it's one of the great features of the crossposter to put in a correction to all the posts at once. But it seems like the technical difficulty would be fairly substantial.

[syderia]

How would the edit function work then ? I assume that the point of not splitting the entry on DW but splitting it on other sites would be in part to be able to edit the entry across the board, but how would DW know to which LJ (or another journalling site) entries the edit should be made ?

[cheyinka]

Maybe there could be a choice between not splitting it, and going back and editing it into two entries on DW, or splitting it, and not being able to readily edit it later?

[montuos]

As msilverstar says, "quite complex and fragile." If the entry is already broken due to size considerations, editing any portion of it, even if easily identifiable, could be hugely problematic: "I forgot this one paragraph up there..." BOOM! The section is too big to post again, and pushing the runover down to the next section could break formatting tags as well as the next section's size limit. You'd have to include a case for adding a new crosspost if the runover rolled that far down. And I'm trying not to think too hard about splitting a numbered list across multiple crossposts...

[montuos]

Another compromise solution could be to have the option of what I'll call a "crosspost teaser" where the user can choose how much or little of the original post (within the other site's size limit, of course) or possibly even completely different text to crosspost to the other site, ending (or possibly beginning) with text stating that the full post is here on DW and linking to it.

I'm envisioning this crosspost teaser as a tag similar to cut text: you can give a truncated version of the actual post, or condense it to a précis, or there's a programmed default display text for when you specify nothing.

Bonus points for having a warning beforehand that the post is too long and suggesting a crosspost teaser (or that the teaser has gotten too long), instead of only that fail notification after the fact.

And as justhuman suggests, I think it should be the responsibility of the users to be aware of the size limitations of the sites they crosspost to and set the appropriate size for a warning according to the smallest of their crosspost sites, but if DW chooses to accept that responsibility for us, I certainly won't kick!

[matgb]

This, I think. I don't think splitting is viable and will be a bit of a nightmare, especially if edits happen at the top.

But having some sort of cut text similar to the crosspost text but stronger, would make a lot of sense to me.

[turlough]

I really like this suggestion!

Related to

[montuos]

See also this related suggestion from last month that I had forgotten about: Enable crossposter to output like the rss feed, if desired. That's probably where I got the idea from, and if you implement the one, I'm guessing it shouldn't be too difficult to implement the other.

Re: Related to

[ciaan]

Yeah.

[the_shoshanna]

+1