This post was composed with a link to a Wired article:
https://lemmy.ohaa.xyz/post/1939209
Then in a separate step, the article was edited and an image was uploaded. The URL of the local image unexpectedly replaced the URL of the article. Luckily I noticed the problem before losing track of the article URL.
Yes, it really is a bug. Your explanation is indeed what I assumed was happening.
But of course it’s still a #LemmyBug. Data loss is a bug. There was no dialog saying “is it okay to erase your existing article link and replace it with an image URL due to a technical limitation”?
Confusion is an understatement. There is no confusion. Users rightfully expect an image upload (which involves no URL) to be non-destructive. In fact providing an URL to an image instead of an upload was not even an option, thus implying that the URL was taken (used for the article). You cannot blame this on the user as it violates the principle of least astonishment.
It’s an implementation oversight, of course, because there is in fact no technical reason a post cannot have multiple pieces of information.
Could maybe have a tabbed UI for a link post or an “image post”. Both would essentially produce the same type of post but it’d possibly be less confusing?
What does ActivePub say about this though? I honestly haven’t looked into the protocol much at all (it seemed like a bit of a rabbit hole and everything’s like RFCs and shit, ie. really technical and time-consuming to follow) so I don’t know what sorts of limits it places on posts
In the case at hand I posted an article, no image. Then I later returned to add an image. If there were a separate tab for posting an image users who add an image late might select the tab for image and assume their article URL is not lost but rather just not displayed in the image tab.
Not sure. If the limitation is borne out of Activity Pub then Lemmy’s only easy fix is to make the limitation clear and also warn users of data loss. Alternatively Lemmy could hide the image URL in the body in a spoiler or something on exported data to enable recipients to render the thumbnail. If it’s a Lemmy-driven limitation then of course another fix would be to add a separate field.
Lemmy already has a protective popup feature for other situations. If you start writing a msg and then try to navigate away from the form, Lemmy asks “are you sure you want to leave?” So the same mechanism could be used for “are you sure you want to delete your URL?” if you try to initiate an image upload.