Display names for communities are shown where name would be more appropriate.

[kolgza]

Context

A community name is an unchangeable an unambiguous identifier for communities (e.g. !vaporwave@lemmy.ml). Unlike community name, "display name" (comparable to a subreddit title) is mutable and potentially ambiguous.

Expected Behavior

Reddit only displays a subreddit title value as a header when viewing the subreddit. In all other contexts, Reddit displays the name value.

In all other contexts, Reddit displays the name value.

This is preferred behavior for a number of reasons:

• Subreddits are colloquially referred to by their name values
  • i.e. r/wholesomememes is referred to as "r slash wholesome memes" when spoke aloud.
• title values often very widely from the name values.
• name values can be consistently and easily resolved to the URL of the subreddit.

Actual Behavior

In Lemmy, display name is used for all contexts. This makes it difficult for users to resolve the URL of a given community. For instance, in the image below, there is no way for users to figure out that It's always dns is supposed to resolve to https://lemmy.ml/c/sysadmin.

Solutions

The only adequate solution is to mimic Reddit's behavior, and use the display name value for community headers.

Other proposed solutions to some of these complaints—such as more-clearly documenting the meaning of display name, or limiting it to 20 characters—would be inadequate because there is no way to force community moderators to use this value as intended.

[krawieck]

This is the reason why in lemmur we show title only on community page and everywhere else we use the name.

[dessalines]

I think the case should be made for using display names, rather than url names / user_ids, both for communities and users, almost everywhere possible in UIs. Some things:

• All the community naming issues are coming from communities using that title field incorrectly, as a description rather than a display name. We could always change that field name in the UI or DB to be more clear, probably to display_name, but /c/wholesomememes should probably have a display name like Wholesome Memes.
• Display names are used in nearly every modern comms app: element, discord, matrix, every IM app, all use them, and only show the user_id / url on hover ( which is what lemmy-ui currently does ).
  • They were an afterthought on reddit, aren't used except on your user page, and so are useless. I definitely don't want to mimic reddit's behavior there, which chooses not even to display the display_names.
  • Every reddit community and user is limited to ascii characters, whereas in lemmy, you can have utf8 chars, spaces, anything you like. Titles get past that arbitrary limitation.
  • Only Twitter and Mastodon annoyingly show both. Mastodon is by far the worst example: since user urls need the @instance too, so truncation is always going to happen:
• Mutability in a community or user display name is a good thing, people can change their pronouns, flags, flair, etc. As long as the hover always shows the real user id, then its not a problem.

[kolgza]

The perspective I'm approaching this from is that if name functions well, and if title has potentially potential disadvantages over name, then why switch to using title?

• name doesn't have any community naming issues. Making the meaning of title more clear won't stop users from intentionally misusing it.
  • A moderator might just want to have a different title value if it suits them.
• It's easier to search for and remember name values, especially considering they don't include any potentially hard-to-remember or hard-to-type characters.
• name values are unique, and cannot collide with any other community.
  • (I should have said "unique" where I said "immutable.")

In other words, because name values are short, unique, and contain only ASCII characters, it is easier to remember them and go back to them.

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Only Twitter and Mastodon annoyingly show both […]

Matrix/Element notable does include each room's unique address on the page where you have to search for a room among a list of hundreds of rooms.

[Nutomic]

@dessalines I dont find the case you make convincing at all.

Display names are used in nearly every modern comms app: element, discord, matrix, every IM app, all use them, and only show the user_id / url on hover

That doesnt mean its a good idea for every use case.

Mutability in a community or user display name is a good thing, people can change their pronouns, flags, flair, etc. As long as the hover always shows the real user id, then its not a problem.

It can be a good thing, but it also has disadvantages. For example, the displayname can be misleading, especially when it gets changed to something completely different. And hovering to see the read ID doesnt work on mobile.

I can definitely see that there are some advantages to showing displaynames by default, such as:

• easier for new users
• maybe better for languages with different alphabet (not sure which characters are allowed for the name)
• possible to change the title (this one is questionable for me)

But there are also clear disadvantages which we cant ignore:

• possible to create wrong or misleading displaynames (by accident or on purpose)
• more confusing for advanced users, its not clear which instance the user/community is on

I think we should switch back to the previous behaviour of showing the name@instance, at least for communities but maybe also for users. Then we can have a more extensive discussion about it, and find a solution that most people agree with (like an option which one should be shown, deciding carefully what to use as default).

And I really dont like that you originally changed this without discussing it with anyone. In fact I cant find any issue or pull request for this change.

[Falmarri]

The display name is a poor choice for in the messages on the front page imo.

In this image, having the name be free form is extremely confusing to know which community this is going to, when the "title" of the community can be anything. Especially since it can scroll off the window.

I realize the community in the image isn't a great example because its title is a good indicator of what it is. But I've seen some nonsense that really leads to confusion

[Die4Ever]

similarly, I think the community name and the URL bar should always include the @instance even when you're on that instance

like it shouldn't be https://beehaw.org/c/technology because then sharing stuff is a little more clunky

instead it should be the full name like https://beehaw.org/c/technology@beehaw.org

same thing for user names and user URLs