The question is basically the title.
It’s very hit-and-miss. But mostly miss. That picture of a cat hiding under wrapping paper taunts me.
It doesn’t seem to be related to what instance the content is on. But I haven’t been able to find any pattern.
Is there an alternative (for non-instance-admins) that works more reliably?
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