I would like to suggest that developers consider as much flexibility when trying to interact with links/handles from off-instance and off-kbin (e.g. lemmy) as possible. I would like for it to work on lemmy in a similar fashion.

I think that the various "incorrect" ways of doing things should work as redirects assuming this would not cause a technical problem. It could even explain the correct way of doing things if you'd like to discourage it.

Non exhaustive examples:

communities

as an example: https://lemmy.ca/c/wowthislemmyexists

search kbin.social for https://lemmy.ca/c/wowthislemmyexists - finds occasions where people have mentioned the URL in comment/post

Most lemmy instances suggest searching for a group in a way that doesn't work:

search kbin.social for
for [!wowthislemmyexists@lemmy.ca](/c/wowthislemmyexists@lemmy.ca) - finds occasions where people have mentioned the handle in comment/post

you need to replace ! with @ to find it:

search kbin.social for
for @wowthislemmyexists@lemmy.ca - works as expected

So the kbin.social URL is https://kbin.social/m/wowthislemmyexists@lemmy.ca

But what about variations a person could try based on principals of how things work e
lsewhere:

https://kbin.social/m/@wowthislemmyexists@lemmy.ca

[https://kbin.social/m/!wowthislemmyexists@lemmy.ca](https://kbin.social/m/[!wowthislemmyexists@lemmy.ca](/c/wowthislemmyexists@lemmy.ca))

even allowing use of the /c/ instead of the /m/?

profiles

profiles have similar inconsistencies.

I can view this off-instance profile on kbin.social: https://kbin.social/u/@btschumy@mas.to

but if I try to drop my own username into the same structure, it doesn't work: https://kbin.social/u/@density@kbin.social

The only way to see my profile is (I think) https://kbin.social/u/density

Hope this all is intelligible.