SOLUTION: literally write out [exclamation mark]community@instance. Do not use the autocomplete function. This works in both the sidebar and comments.
Using the URL markdown method (to have the display text be different from the dynamic link) impacts other UIs.
If you enter this:
You get this:
The links in the screenshot above will work in a graceful manner irrespective of what instance (or even what UI/platform?) you use.
Original Text
What are the best practises for adding links to other communities in your sidebar?
I mod the LW hardware community and all the links are tied to LW.
So https://programming.dev/c/linuxhardware
is linked via https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected]
But that would mean anyone not on LW would get a logged out view of LW accessing the programming.dev/linuxhardware community. I don't have a programming.dev account so I added an LW-specific URL.
Is there some sort of markdown code that would "auto redirect" the user to a view based on their instance without any use of explicit URLs. For a second I thought that's what the exclamation mark does, but turns out it's just a shortcut for adding community URLs.
The autocomplete is from before the webUI was updated to turn plaintext mentions of communities clickable.
For some reason, it wasn't removed when that was added.
But just writing the name is standard, and what basically all clients support now.