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I think the main reason for unreliability is admins defederating the instance it gathers data from. For example all piefed instances block it by default.
Not sure of the exact rules, but it might be something like it won't get data from any post or comment by a user on one of those instances.
the protocols underlying the fediverse are largely.. hmmm.. more like guidelines than rules.
there are literally hundreds of different platforms/projects sending around activities with lemmy being only one of those interacting places. somtimes lemmy is just a relay for non-lemmy content. it can get very complicated.
and then add to this that server operators can modify their servers reactions to activities however they see fit. most users would use shit 'out-of-the-box', some heavily modify their source projects... for example, to ignore 'delete' requests to circumvent moderation.
if you think youre ever going to find the 'correct' vote count, youre expecting more accuracy from that metadata than it will ever provide from any source.
I would expect it to work reliably, but I have been wondering why it throws 404s, that seems like the wrong error...
i see 404s all the time on deleted threads/comments. when i look in my history i see stuff, when i attempt to click into it, it turns out that thing was moderated and deleted and shows a 404. the metadata technically still exists in places, but in others it is now inaccessible. and thats just my platform, which is not lemmy. every platform handles things slightly differently.
"reliably"? im surprised it works at all..
kinda like email. ever try manually sending an email via telnet? crazy the shit works at all
I am dumb, but this is how it was explained to me:
You know how our instances are federated to one another selectively? Instance owners decide whether to federate to Lemvotes or not.
An alternative that's usually proposed that I deemed too far out of my interests was creating and hosting your own instance. Then you can view the votes of instances who federate to you
Why can't someone just make a frontend that shows the voters?
Good question. If you fuck with the more microblog side of fediverse, votes literally appear on your posts as likes. Now that I think about it that's a viable alternative, OP. you just can't browse lemmy the same way, you have follow comms as if they're topics to get them to appear on your feed.
I should see if I can get wafrn to talk to lemmies and piefeds.
They can and it has been done, IIRC Friendica or something does that…? (Correct me if I am wrong.)
Even on Lemmy, community mods can see who voted how on which posts and comments.
Instance owners decide whether to federate to Lemvotes or not.
Yeah, but I'm quite certain that I can find examples of posts/comments from the same instance, some of which works fine on Lemvotes and one of which doesn't.
For instance, my most recent two posts were:
But the most recent post works fine on Lemvotes while the second-most-recent gives me the 404 page.
The common denominator is the instance the particular comment is posted from. For instance you could be viewing any thread in particular. On any instance in general. But if it's one of the ones that's defederated from lemvotes like lemmy.ml. That person's comment or post and everything under it will give you a 404.
It will also cause a mismatch on vote count. You will see everyone that upvoted or downvoted the comment except for those from the defederated instances.
Yes, but as I said in another comment, I have examples of comments made by the same user to two different communities on the same instance which none-the-less differ with regard to whether they work on Lemvotes. So apparently it can vary by which community it's posted to, not just by instance.
Wait, is this a new community? I bet you it's a federation issue. If this is the first time that the lemvotes server has been pointed to that community. It may not have a copy of anything on hand to actually check against. Depending on how it works. Piefed and Lemmy both can take a while to populate a new community. And won't do so until the first person from its instance requests to view them. So you might not see much of anything at first but over the next few days especially if there are repeated attempts to access it should try to load in the backlog. But it's not instant. So it may just be a legitimate 404.
Ah! Ok. That makes sense and seems plausible. The Linuxsucks Sucks community is a little over a month old and hasn't had all that many folks participate.
Yes I'm Loosely aware of the drama surrounding the reference community. I just don't give it any mind. And use Linux or BSD on everything. If they want to be a pissy power tripping baby in their community then they can. But I don't think they should expect too many to participate either.
Fair. Definitely don't blame you. I only participate because it's fun to poke the bear and have fun at Madthumbs' expense sometimes. Like the Buttcoin community (or rather "communities" - there are at least 4 on Lemmy) does with cryptobros. And Artificial Ignorance does with generative AI.
heh I do that sometimes still I suppose. Though much more in moderation at my age.
~~No what I was stating is that who the parent of a comment is can impact it as much as who made the comment. Go into a thread where anyone from Lemmy.ml has posted. If you try to look at their upvotes and downvotes it will give you a 404. If you look at the posts of anyone who replies to them it will also give you a 404. However if you see someone who replied to them post in another thread. It can report without a 404 simply because the person from lemmy.ml wasn't in the chain. If they enter anywhere into the chain you will get a 404. The same for any instance that has defederated~~
Oh wait I see what you're saying now interesting
Ah. I'm with you. Well that's super annoying. Maybe one more reason why lemmy.world should defederate from lemmy.ml. :\
Edit: Oh, I wrote this before I saw your edit. I thought you were saying that if a lemmy.ml user responds to a thread on lemmy.world, then the whole thread won't work on Lemvotes. Which... I don't specifically know isn't the case at this point. But yeah.
Huh. Yeah I can't see lemvotes results for any of your posts anywhere. I wonder if .world has defederated. You said you got results for one of them? Are you using the linked marked with the fediverse symbol?
The other one will give lemvotes the instance you are currently on which will only show results if the instance you're browsing from federates to lemvotes.
The fediverse link will give lemvotes the post from the instance the author posted from, which it needs to work consistently
Huh! After reviewing, I think I must have mistaken something because my last two posts are not in the same community. (I also switched computers between my last comment two up and this one.)
And now, if I pick a bunch of my posts in the same community, I'm consistently seeing that those apparently don't work on Lemvotes. (Or at least I haven't found a counterexample yet.)
But the OP for this thread (to this community which is on Lemmy.world) works fine (for me, at least) on Lemvotes while my second-most-recent post (also to a community on Lemmy.world) doesn't work on Lemvotes.
And, yeah, I'm using the fediverse symbol link for all these tests. Maybe Lemmy.world blocks some communities for federation but not others? That's about the only theory that makes sense to me off the top of my head so far.
That seems plausible. I wish I knew more about how it worked and could have given you better info
Some instances opt out of Lemvotes getting anything, and, afaik, it returns a generic 404 error instead of actually telling you the source instance you put into the bar has opted out.
However, it could also run into issues if there is any kind of middleman bot checking like Cloudflare or Anubis on the host instance.