Rename to sidebar again (fixes #6291) #6295

Nutomic · 2026-01-23T11:05:18Z

Rename description fields to sidebar again as it is clearer (for community and site)
Rename multi-community description to summary because it has 150 char limit like community.summary
Rename tag.description to summary and add 150 char length limit, because it doesnt need unlimited text
Tested manually that site and community fetched from 0.19 have sidebar set correctly
We may want to add multi_community.sidebar with unlimited markdown text

dessalines

I have no problem with getting rid of description, I agree its clearer at least. But I still really dislike how strange the apub mappings are.

If lemmy summary is never actually going to mean summary in apub to keep old cruft carrying forward, then it should probably be renamed too.

crates/api/api/src/reports/community_report/create.rs

crates/apub/activities/src/community/report.rs

dessalines · 2026-01-23T13:45:14Z

crates/apub/objects/src/objects/multi_community.rs

      summary: self.title.clone(),
-      content: self.description.clone(),
+      content: self.summary.clone(),


This looks wrong, and doesn't match the community apub.

The multi community title (IE display name) should be the name field like it is in community.

The multi community content should be the summary.

There should be no summary, since that's used for the sidebar / markdown which multi-community doesn't have yet.

I really dislike that summary doesn't map to summary btw, that's incredibly confusing and makes me think we should use a different name.

It should be

name -> display_name / title.

content -> markdown / sidebar

summary -> summary / short description.

This will be a breaking changes release, why not just go forward with this and keep it simplified.

I agree that it would make more sense. However this would completely break federation with all Lemmy 0.19 instances, and would also break federation with other platforms like Piefed and NodeBB which use the same format. So its not worthwhile in practice.

These aren't critical, and its better to fix these sooner than later. Eventually everyone will be on lemmy 1.0 and this inconsistency will go away.

At least fix the multi community display name.

dessalines · 2026-01-23T13:50:41Z

crates/db_schema_file/src/schema.rs

This looks good.

migrations/2026-01-23-094410-0000_rename-sidebar-again/up.sql

flamingos-cant · 2026-01-24T02:19:45Z

crates/apub/objects/src/objects/community.rs

+      summary: self.sidebar.as_ref().map(|d| markdown_to_html(d)),
+      source: self.sidebar.clone().map(Source::new),
+      content: self.summary.clone(),
+      media_type: self.sidebar.as_ref().map(|_| MediaTypeHtml::Html),


I get that we're stuck with the summary <-> sidebar mapping for historical and compatibility reasons, but the source property is pretty explicitly about mapping content to different markups. Having the source map to summery and sending a content is going to be pretty confusing for people implementing the spec as stated. I think we'd be better off just defining a custom property for federating the new summary, or use the preview property like this:

"preview": { "type": "Note", "content": "some summary" }

The current behaviour matches 0.19, and no one has complained about that. If you want to make any changes there, please open a new issue.

Piefed and NodeBB also federate in the same way:
curl -H 'Accept: application/activity+json' https://piefed.social/c/nonpolitical_comics | jq

"summary": "A community for comic lovers who just want to get away from politics and gloom and doom. \n<ul>\n<li>Rule 1 - Be civil. </li>\n<li>Rule2 - Don’t be uncivil. </li>\n</ul>\nPosting guidelines: \n<ul>\n<li>No political comics. This generally includes anything referencing whatever bullshit Trump is up to, but also includes the megacorps. Essentially if the comic is about how the world today sucks, it doesn’t belong here. </li>\n<li>Where possible, tag the title with [comic name]. This refers to the name of the artist or overall comic, not the title of the specific strip. </li>\n<li>Tag NSFW / NSFL / AI content accordingly. </li>\n</ul>\n<img alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://media.piefed.social/posts/TC/pB/TCpBjER6CjTNaaX.jpg\"/> \n", "source": { "content": "A community for comic lovers who just want to get away from politics and gloom and doom. \r\n\r\n* Rule 1 - Be civil. \r\n* Rule 2 - Don't be uncivil. \r\n\r\nPosting guidelines: \r\n\r\n* No political comics. This generally includes anything referencing whatever bullshit Trump is up to, but also includes the megacorps. Essentially if the comic is about how the world today sucks, it doesn't belong here. \r\n* Where possible, tag the title with [comic name]. This refers to the name of the artist or overall comic, not the title of the specific strip. \r\n* Tag NSFW / NSFL / AI content accordingly. \r\n\r\n![](https://media.piefed.social/posts/TC/pB/TCpBjER6CjTNaaX.jpg) ", "mediaType": "text/markdown" },

curl -H 'Accept: application/activity+json' https://community.nodebb.org/category/3/nodebb-development | jq

"summary": "Stay tuned here to hear more about new releases and features of NodeBB!\n",

Piefed and NodeBB also federate in the same way:

Nodebb doesn't set a source and neither sets a content:

curl -sH 'Accept: application/activity+json' https://piefed.social/c/nonpolitical_comics | jq '.source, .content' { "content": "A community for comic lovers who just want to get away from politics and gloom and doom. \r\n\r\n* Rule 1 - Be civil. \r\n* Rule 2 - Don't be uncivil. \r\n\r\nPosting guidelines: \r\n\r\n* No political comics. This generally includes anything referencing whatever bullshit Trump is up to, but also includes the megacorps. Essentially if the comic is about how the world today sucks, it doesn't belong here. \r\n* Where possible, tag the title with [comic name]. This refers to the name of the artist or overall comic, not the title of the specific strip. \r\n* Tag NSFW / NSFL / AI content accordingly. \r\n\r\n![](https://media.piefed.social/posts/TC/pB/TCpBjER6CjTNaaX.jpg) ", "mediaType": "text/markdown" } null curl -sH 'Accept: application/activity+json' https://community.nodebb.org/category/3/nodebb-development | jq '.source, .content' null null

The current behaviour matches 0.19, and no one has complained about that.

We don't set a content for communities in 0.19, so being out of spec doesn't matter. I just think it'd be better if we used something else for federating the new short description data, I'll open an issue.

Lets please just do the breaking change and have :

name -> display_name / title.
content + source -> markdown / sidebar
summary -> summary / short description.

All this confusion will go away, and eventually other projects will catch up.

Nutomic · 2026-01-27T13:01:41Z

CI keeps failing with different random errors which seem unrelated:

Edit: Cant reproduce these locally either.

dessalines · 2026-01-27T15:02:34Z

Denied username appears to be because of restarts. Fixed here: #6303

The delete post error has been a problem for months and I've failed to figure out why its happening intermittently. The only way I've "solved" it is to run the tests like 4 times.

dessalines

I still don't like how we're carrying this naming cruft forward for eternity instead of making the breaking change, but we can continue that convo in the other 2 linked issues.

Nutomic requested review from SleeplessOne1917, dessalines, dullbananas and phiresky as code owners January 23, 2026 11:05

Nutomic added 2 commits January 23, 2026 12:06

Rename to sidebar again (fixes #6291)

1579efa

fmt

76123e5

Nutomic force-pushed the rename-sidebar-again branch from 8eb9109 to 76123e5 Compare January 23, 2026 11:06

Nutomic mentioned this pull request Jan 23, 2026

Rename to sidebar again LemmyNet/lemmy-js-client#830

Merged

Nutomic added 2 commits January 23, 2026 12:57

fixes

095de33

update api tests

a2030c6

dessalines reviewed Jan 23, 2026

View reviewed changes

flamingos-cant reviewed Jan 24, 2026

View reviewed changes

Nutomic added 2 commits January 26, 2026 16:16

Merge branch 'main' into rename-sidebar-again

38a6456

rename community_report.original_community_sidebar

a5a519b

Nutomic force-pushed the rename-sidebar-again branch from 2bc391e to a5a519b Compare January 26, 2026 15:32

flamingos-cant mentioned this pull request Jan 26, 2026

Don't set content on Groups #6299

Open

Nutomic mentioned this pull request Jan 27, 2026

Rename federation fields for multi-community #6301

Draft

Nutomic and others added 3 commits January 27, 2026 16:42

Merge branch 'main' into rename-sidebar-again

8f72b84

Merge branch 'main' into rename-sidebar-again

a85bb25

Merge branch 'main' into rename-sidebar-again

dfd311b

dessalines approved these changes Jan 28, 2026

View reviewed changes

dessalines merged commit 2d049a3 into main Jan 28, 2026
2 checks passed

dessalines deleted the rename-sidebar-again branch January 28, 2026 14:43

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Rename to sidebar again (fixes #6291) #6295

Rename to sidebar again (fixes #6291) #6295

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Nutomic commented Jan 23, 2026 •

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