Please see below for minutes from today's Forum and Threaded Discussions Task Force monthly meeting.

Apologies in advance if I misrepresented anybody or missed any crucial bits of information

• Housekeeping:

  • Neither Angus nor Julian have updated the WG fediverse handles yet. Sorry about that! Good start, pat on the back, let's try again next month.

• Angus: question of what we want to do with survey reports?

  • Potential academic usage going forward
  • Use of spreadsheets has direct utility; no need to come up with anything more complicated at this time
  • Theoretically, one could develop an entire standard/knowledge graph for how the fediverse works

• Group Federation among implementors (1b12/400e)

  • Angus: Disambiguation is an issue: is a remote implementor following 1b12 or 400e?
    • trwnh pointed out that it doesn't matter, you can differentiate based on behaviour
    • Angus: From an implementor perspective, I am reminded that it is worth supporting the actions described in 400e as well
    • Julian: If the FEPs don't directly conflict, what is the minimum set of 400e behaviour we need to support?
    • trwnh: just because a group announces, doesn't mean it is 1b12. Hubzilla/Friendica send out announces, but send out the object itself
    • Angus to follow up on that minimum set of behaviours to support

• Note vs. Article

  • Seems to be a plurality of implementers sending as:Note (given Mastodon's substandard treatment towards Article types)
  • If you deal with text, you'll almost always be sending out as:Note
  • Much time was spent last meeting discussing the nuances of determining Article vs. Note.
  • Evan P. had put it generally: A tweet is an as:Note, a blog post is an as:Article
  • Conclusion: exercise in futility to attempt to determine with complete certainty whether any given submission fits "Article" or "Note"
  • In the end may be best to let implementers send whatever they want, and others display it as they want.
  • HOWEVER, undue influence from Mastodon because as:Article is reduced down to title/url.
    • renchap has opened the door to working out some sort of compromise
    • We will likely not get full representation (inline images, more html tags, etc.) in Mastodon, but a good compromise or stopgap would be to have Mastodon use summary to populate the text
      • Note that this conflicts with existing use of summary as content warning. Discussion to continue via fediverse.
  • Angus: Open to facilitating a Mastodon PR if the team are open to one
  • Darius Kazemi:
    • "I am happy to support robust implementations for new content types in Hometown as a proving ground for Mastodon "
    • "Also Hometown supports Articles if anyone wants to do proof of concept"

• Use of context in objects

  • Angus: potential use case bulk importing conversations; if we could get a base implementation working, that would be a good first step
  • Julian: Given the results of the survey there is an opportunity here to trailblaze; there is no current observed standard of use for the as:context property
  • Angus: A report to SocialCG could come after test/base implementation between NodeBB and Discourse
  • Chris Moser: Feels like we've shoving forum/threaded discussions into an ActivityPub protocol
    • Should hash it out more instead of trying to fit it in
  • Dmitri: We are talking about AS, not AP; could propose a forum-specific extension (see below re: extending AP/AS)
  • Dmitri: Additioanlly, we do have the affordance of interpreting the context field by using as:type.
    • e.g. If it is type Article, then it means root thread, vs. if it is type Note, then means something else, etc.
  • trwnh: Partial agree - Doesn't really matter what type is. AS 2.0 was written around that; e.g. context is "put this thing in this bucket"
    • The base use of as:context is to group things together, e.g. Pleroma, context is a literal string match
  • Aaron: We need to create a new context for a period of time, use it across some implementations, then add it to AS 3.0 or similar
  • Jennifer: Using context as grouping mechanism ; good first step
    • "The information I would hope to get out of a context collection is to know where to send that request to reply, or whether that would even be understood by the recipient"
    • e.g. managing reply control to a thread/topic
    • having an object there is a start, but reply controls would be great
    • trwnh: Some way to having an approval stamp; 0391 special collection proofs tries to describe this
      • we have two parallel paths, one with context collection, one with replies collection
  • Chris Moser: AS supports multiple types? That could be used to our advantage; many devs use collection in context, we want to use it as an actor, can they be combined?
  • trwnh: it is possible and I advocate for that; logical path is to have collections that can be followed. Actors don't have to be limited by type
  • Dmitri: Should we expand the concept of actor? For the purposes of being able to follow. Got into that in previous AP triage meeting.
    • Counter-proposal: instead of collection being an actor, divorce the concept of outboxes and actors
  • Julian: Let's take this offline to forum for now, reconvene next month
  • Chris: Inbox/outbox not necessarily limited to actors
  • a: Yes to adding to next month's agenda; an activitypub actor is anything that has an inbox/outbox. AS specifies types, but this can be discussed later.

• Re: extending AP/AS

  • Dmitri: A lot of devs would like to know how to extend the protocol
    • SocialCG is working on a "how do you add an extension" report, early draft is up
    • Super-basic and important question
  • Jennifer: Extending can mean a couple diff. things; complication.
    • usually means adding a new term to the @context; that's trivial and permissionless
    • Alternatively, also FEP process, modifying AP/AS repo directly — much harder, whole w3c process
    • Dmitri: Adding to @context is easy
  • Angus: Could be I or you (Julian) to write a standard
  • trwnh: Volunteering to help facilitate creation of note/report to CG

• Open floor

  • Jennifer: Why the deference to Mastodon? Opportunity to go our own way.
  • Julian: Good question;
    • Likely a non-insignificant part of the ForumWG would be happy to turn the tables, but easier said than done.
      • Some software's users would not understand the full context and ask for a better experience from Mastodon.
      • e.g. WordPress federation, was originally as:Article but now as:Note after very quick feedback
    • The ForumWG could play the card to let Mastodon play catch-up, and we might still, but given that they've signalled an interest in working towards a compromise, let's see where it goes (re: Note vs. Article)
  • a: I would prefer to see other implementations go their own way, but mastodon CAN change, it will just take time
    • many users want something that works RIGHT NOW, not eventually
  • Angus: viewing Mastodon compatibility as a starting point

• Action items:

  • Angus to investigate the minimum set of behaviours required to support remote implementers adhering to 400e
    • Angus and Julian to work closely on proof-of-concept use of resolvable context between their softwares prior to a formal report
  • Spin-off discussions:
    • If you Announce(Object) are you not following 1b12?
    • Article vs. Note; recommendations, article contains richer html, note CAN be stricter, post attachments? Summary, but conflicts with CWs?
    • Is renchap open to better treatment of as:Article; stopgap solution
    • Chris Moser/trwnh/Dmitri - What is an actor, can a collection be an actor? Dmitri summary of previous AP triage meeting

#activitypub #forumwg #swicg #swicg-threadiverse-wg