There have been some requests to make it possible for Mastodon users to create threads on Lemmy. At the moment this is not possible because Mastodon cant set the title field which is mandatory in Lemmy. The same problem affects other projects like Pleroma or Friendica (where title is optional).
It is unlikely that Mastodon would make any change in this regard, so a workaround in Lemmy would be necessary. I implemented such a workaround which makes the title optional when receiving a federated post, and uses the first line of the content instead. This workaround could also be made configurable per instance or per community.
But to be honest I am not sure the workaround is a good idea in general, as it could result in bad titles, and generally more low-quality posts. Thats why I want to know what the community thinks about it.
The mockup below by @[email protected] looks pretty close to how I was envisioning it. It definitely looks off, and that’s why my preferred implementation is that Mastodon (and the other microblog services) add title support. Since they won’t or aren’t, I would rather that non-local content is preserved how it was, without too significant guesswork to fill in each platforms’ fields. Titleless, but preserving the post and not having a poor title is preferable to me than an awkward title that anyone on mastodon doesn’t see and doesn’t know about.
Allowing for people on lemmy to submit titleless posts can be allowed, since the tech would already be in the front-end to display it. Doesn’t have to be allowed, though.