Lists in mastodon were completely useless until we added the new features to QOTO for subscribing to remote instances local timelines and other subscriptions. There is a certain satisfaction in making a useless feature useful. It felt like wasted space before.

If you can't tell I'm super happy and excited about all the new features we added. So much fun getting to use them and knowing we are the only english speaking instance to have these features :)

@freemo Have you compared the domain subscription with https://mastovue.glitch.me or fedilab? Does it make sense to compare?

For me some toots I can see in those clients seem to be missing in "domain subscribed lists" at random. Can't see any pattern, but it seems to be a substantial part. I guess it's another obvious thing about the difference between how it's done on client side vs server side I'm misunderstanding...

@namark Id be curious to hear how fedilab implements it exactly. They would be useful to compare but I dont know enough about the fedilab internals to know how they compare.

@freemo I think they are just doing a simple API request like this:
https://fosstodon.org/api/v1/timelines/public?local=true

It seems to correspond to their output, and I can see the same discrepancy between that and my list on here.

@namark I'll dig deeper see what i find.

@namark With the help of Rob I figured out whats going on..

So you have two options.

1) is like you already did, use domain subscription. This basically fiters from the federated feed and gives you a timeline.

2) you can go to the properties on a post or in a profile and pull up the remote timeline. This will pull it up as a separate column and its content will be filled via the API. You can of course pint he column.

@namark FYI I mispoke the link to the remote timeline is only int he properties off a post, not the profile itself. Which is odd ill fix that, but it gets you the effect you want.

@freemo Thanks for looking into it! Unfortunately for me both methods yield the same result. That column's content is identical to the domain subscribed list(for those that had enough time to fill up), and still missing some toots compared to a direct API call, or the other two clients I mentioned. It's hard to catch on smaller instances, but for mastodon.social or fosstodon.org I can always see 1-2 missing in first 5-10.

@namark hmm thats strange. When i tested it earlier the remote timeline seemed to populate instantly and retroactively like the timeline API would suggest where as subscriptions started empty and filled slowly if at all.

@freemo yes, the remote timeline column is instantaneous for me too, but still missing toots, and once the list catches up, they are identical. So could be using the same method under the hood... or could be something down the line that causes the problem for both methods...

@namark So I tested this locally and my findings dont agree with yours.

I have had a list goign locally for tech.lgbt through subscriptions since the features was added 2 days ago. This is a very slow server without many updates it seems because in those 2 days the list has yet to update for me, so we clearly arent getting much int he federation pipeline from them.

However if i pull up the remote timeline I do in fact get a ton of toots from them over the time period I have had my list going. So it would appear the remote timeline does in fact show more content than the domain subscription, even if you give it time to catch up.

@freemo Snooping around a bit more, I was able to open one of the missing toots in QOTO's interface and star it. So can confirm It not a block (that confirms it right?). Also the toot appeared both in the list and in the remote instance column after that.

@namark I agree with you, it seems unlikely it is a block.

Lets CC in @noellabo because he originally authored this particular functionality so he may better know where this bug is coming from or whats going on.

@freemo @namark @noellabo I'd assume it's that the list only contains posts your instance knows about from the remote instance, not a direct copy of their public timeline

@mewmew

As far as i understand this code (I didnt write it so I may be getting it wrong) thats not hwo it works. Remote instances provide an API point that has the entire local feed (the public part). As far as I can tell when you view the remote timeline here by pulling it up via the properties as its own column then it does in fact fill everything in, not just things from the remote timeline, but there is a bug and it does miss some stuff I think.

What you describe does apply too but thats only when you do it through Domain Subscriptions a seperate but similar feature we provide that works through filtering the federated feed instead.

@noellabo @namark