Minutes from 4 April 2024 Technical Alignment Meeting
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For those who were not able to attend the technical alignment meeting of the informal "Threadiverse Working Group", I have taken minutes during the meeting and are sharing them here.
@[email protected] has made a recording of the meeting for those who wish to listen — the password to access this recording is
z+1*4pUB.Thank you to all those who attended, we will meet again next month! Follow myself or the WG category to be notified about additional developments.
Attendees
- Angus McLeod
- Julian Lam
- Evan Prodromou
- Aaron Grey
- Rimu Atkinson
- Erlend Sogge Heggen
- Laurens Hof
- Penar Musaraj
- Other participants are not listed as they are not mentioned in notes below, but there were ~20 participants.
Notes
- Participant introductions
- “Forasphere”/”Foraverse” vs “Threadiverse”
- Both have a topic-like structure and so much of the technical structure is the same
- More helpful to focus on the differences from microblogging as the de facto implementation of ActivityPub
- No matter what name, it is mostly UI distinctions with some different handling based on nomenclature
- Rimu brings up discussion regarding nomenclature; related document
- “We don’t call things the same words”
- Aaron posits that “Circles” could be a useful common term
- Julian posits that end of the day no implementor here will likely consider changing their already-established terminology
- Aaron proposes a goal for the group: determine a common set of terms to use in discussions going forward; a lingua franca
- Evan proposes a goal to produce documentation that other forum (or reddit-like alternatives) can use to become compatible
- Additional goal (added later): reaching out to other forum devs (who aren’t already in this WG or looking into AP). Additional outreach/engagement from other forum softwares.
- Julian suggests that perhaps the FEP process would be a possible path forward
- Mastodon’s microblogging concept leads to other implementations following suit
- Coordinated effort to increase compatibility between threadiverse-type applications is attractive
- Erlend wants to see better interop between threadiverse apps. Discourse to NodeBB, etc.
- Angus states that we’ve reached half-way point and summarizes (see above)
- Meeting focus shifts to debate re: FEP process or Task force under SocialCG
- Julian proposes on behalf of Johannes Ernst (in absentia) that the WG be organized under the FediDevs umbrella
- Evan proposes that the WG be an official task force under the SocialCG
- W3C/ActivityPub has many task forces already, one for data portability, one for webfinger, one for testing, etc.
- Differences between task force report and FEP:
- Both similar documents
- FEP has a more asynchronous process for clearing out objections, less cohesion than SocialCG
- Discussions take place on SocialHub
- Most FEPs individually authored
- SocialCG reports collaboratively edited and put forth to W3C
- Some questions re: FEP process
- Evan answers: Anyone can propose, comments collected. After 6 months author can determine it finalized, but implementation varies. Many draft FEPs are dropped due to lack of interest or are hypothetical in nature.
- Penar asks whether FEP or W3C report process is faster
- Both are roughly equivalent, SocialCG reports are “a few months” to draft, and “a few months” to be accepted/finalized.
- Aaron posits that SWICG (or SocialCG) is a better group since it eventually goes into a published W3C article
- Aim towards convergence, consistent UI. Safe and usable user experience where the end-user has choice.
- Laurens remarks on the increased level of cooperation that has not been often found in the fediverse, sees this as an opportunity to forge a path toward what we want instead of being bound by an FEP.
- Angus motions that we join the SWICG as a task force
- Motion carries with 12 ayes out of 16 present
- Next meeting of SWICG 5 Apr 1pm Eastern; Angus and Julian to attend
- 3pm Eastern; meeting scheduled end, Evan and Erlend (and some others) drop out
- What do we call the group “foraverse” “forasphere” “threadiverse”
- Benti posits that it is weird to call ourselves representatives of the threadiverse as that distinction is reserved for Lemmy and nutomic is not present
- Julian suggests that the term is not exclusive to Lemmy/kbin and asks to simply expand the definition to include Piefed, Discourse, NodeBB, Flarum, et al.
- Additional back and forth regarding how and where to carry on discussions outside of monthly calls
- Shared Google Doc sufficient for now, can explore additional options later
- Julian posits that a federated option is ideal, acknowledges bias when suggesting that NodeBB be used. However, as it would be federated, where the discussions take place is mostly incidental.
- A federated solution would be easiest way to reach fediverse developers.
- Angus motions that we call ourselves the Threadiverse Working Group (or Task Force)
- Motion carries with 9 ayes out of 13 present
Action Items
- Angus or Julian to set up shared Google Doc for meeting/agenda prep for next meeting
- Attend SWICG meeting on 5 Apr 2024 13:00 EDT
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smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)replied to julian on last edited by
Important note to discussions of the #FEP.
SocialHub merely *facilitates* the FEP process.
The #SocialHub #ActivityPub dev community is only the *default* community channel.
Meaning its optional. By no means is it *required* to discuss there, if you don't want to. For any FEP a forum topic is created, but you can discuss anywhere else.
Each FEP document in the #codeberg repo gets an accompanying tracking issue that list all the places where discussion takes place.
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smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)replied to smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊) on last edited by
So if you have a working group at #FediForum or #SocialCG the discussions can take place entirely at these locations to keep everything together. And still posts #FEP's to gather feedback on them and see folks implement them.
As suggested in the diagram there's interaction from the #W3C #SocialCG who cherry-pick as needed whenever they see opportunity to further standardize particular artifacts that're crafted anywhere in the decentralized #ActivityPub developer community.
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@julian @angusmcleod i see there was a resolution to attend the April 5th SWICG meeting so I'll keep most of the comments to there, but re: “Forasphere”/”Foraverse” vs “Threadiverse” and "mostly UI distinctions with some different handling based on nomenclature": I'd argue that this is correct on a surface level and incorrect on a technical level. It *could* be generic, but there are too many wrong assumptions that leak into the protocol level instead of being bound at the UI level. More to come
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infinite love ⴳreplied to infinite love ⴳ on last edited by
@julian @angusmcleod anyway re: FEP and CG task force, we can definitely do both. i do intend to be involved in both as well
and before you ask, 9988 is coming along somewhat, but it could use more feedback and input on UX considerations, e.g. things that should be possible that aren't currently possible or easy in a 1b12 world. I've currently got following topics, following categories for just topics and not comments on topics, organizing categories into hierarchies, moving posts and topics. -
@julian @angusmcleod Is there any particular reason why you're not organising under the existing W3C working groups but instead are working to form yet another one?
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@[email protected] we actually are forming this WG under the umbrella of the W3C. That was one of the items voted on and passed.
Keep in mind that while doing so means we abide by their conventions (including eventually putting together a report), it does not restrict us from creating an FEP as well, or working with those (e.g. @[email protected]) who already are.
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@julian I am once again reminded of why Roberts Rules are written the way that they are and why the "Roberts Rules for small groups" caps at 12 people.
