FR: fetch user if not found

[thibaultmol]

If someone goes to a url on their instance for a user that is not known to that instance, Mastodon's ui doesn't automatically try and fetch that user (for some reason). Instead you get a 404 page.

It would be nice if this extension could then also try and tell the instance to fetch that user.

(so what I mean is: take some random user that your instance doesn't know, then make that url on your instance. I tried it on your instance, but i guess Glitch will just redirect to the remote users's instance. I took a random user that my instance doesn't know: https://en.osm.town/@C_J@tech.lgbt if you go to that page, it's a 404. If I were to search that user, my instance would fetch it. But not just by visiting the url like that)

[virtulis]

Hi,

I'm not really aware in what scenario you could organically end up on an URL like that.

• If it's an @ in a post, that user should already have been fetched (if not, search probably won't work either).
• If it's a link, it would be to the original instance.
• If you type it in manually, why not just use the search UI in the first place?

Am I missing something? :upside_down_face:

I think I used to try and re-search 404 links back when I did the fake ID shenanigans, but now I didn't think that's something that should happen.

I am considering attempting to resolve clicked remote links to local instance (as a separate feature), could probably do the same for users.

[thibaultmol]

The Streetpass extension creates these kinds of situations for me

[virtulis]

Ha!

I do think it's something that Streetpass should solve itself, but ok, I'll try adding that since I already intercept the user get call anyway.