Seeing #nodeBB #ActivityPub implementation in action here is just really cool. Especially since I first saw the post on my masto feed, and then you open it up in the original source and you're suddenly on a forumhttps://community.nodebb.org/topic/17908...

Laurens Hof

Seeing #nodeBB #ActivityPub implementation in action here is just really cool. Especially since I first saw the post on my masto feed, and then you open it up in the original source and you're suddenly on a forum

https://community.nodebb.org/topic/17908/threadiverse-working-group?lang=en-US

Tim Chambers

@laurenshof Oh yeah, that's cool.

Shoq

@tchambers @laurenshof I’ve been wanting something to do that since forever

Shoq

@tchambers @laurenshof @julian I understand that I can post to a forum URL to activity Pub, but can replies made to that post (via AP clients) then appear in the source nodeBB forum as a reply?

julian

@[email protected] yes! Check the original forum topic from @[email protected] here:

https://community.nodebb.org/topic/25b26520-65a7-4e9f-add4-ae79bb1e4479

julian

@[email protected] to be fair, that topic link you posted should also open up in your ActivityPub reader of choice. That's one thing the new threadiverse WG would want to address collectively.

Shoq

@julian this is outstanding. you told me 6 months ago this is where you were going. Looks like you’re there. I’ve got to wrap my head around this.it could be the answer to a number of issues we’ve been facing. congratulations. great work. cc @Green_Footballs @jsigwart

julian

@[email protected] I'm able to move relatively fast because I've got a decade of established software to use as a solid platform to springboard off of (thanks to the hard work of @baris and the rest of the NodeBB dev community).

The basics are here (though still in flux). We're going to flesh out as much as we can as we find parallels between ActivityPub and NodeBB. The key now is to make sure we implement our features thoughtfully.

Shoq

@julian yes that’s exactly what attracted me to the whole project from the jump. that there was such a huge base of code already there just waiting for activity Pub integration. I’m scrambling right now to rethink what I had planned to do but using nodeBB as our actual Forum tool. Where can I read more about your interest in “public topics?”

julian

@[email protected] what would you like to know?

NodeBB is currently configurable with a fine-grained privileges system at the category level. You're able to restrict access to specific user groups or users across a number of scopes.

However, this is a feature mutually exclusive to Mastodon's note visibility feature (which is really just a different UI for ActivityPub content addressing), so that is currently why NodeBB only supports public-only posts at this time.

Shoq

@julian Is this regarding public AP posts? What about posts within the nBB platform proper? Can groups share threads private only to their members (ala Lemmy?)

julian

@[email protected] Yes, you can. So in ActivityPub parlance, a "group actor" refers to what we call a category (for the sake of simplicity, as "group actor" can mean a lot of other things too...).

So we have category-level privileges, and you are able to lock down a category so that locally, only some subset of users can read and/or post.

For example, the "NodeBB Development" category is reserved so that only staff members can post, but anybody can reply.

There are a couple categories here that are not visible to the public, as well.

Shoq

@julian To be clear, only authorized node BB members can reply to a restricted topic, but that topic thread can be made public via AP?

Shoq

@julian can I explore most of these features via the community demo site ?

julian

@[email protected] things get more complicated when we're talking federation, but... yes. I think you could theoretically lock down a topic so that only locally registered-users can reply, but the topic is visible to the fediverse.

That said, the only thing NodeBB can enforce is that replies coming in don't get accepted. If someone from mastodon.social decides to send a reply, it'll still get accepted by mastodon.social and displayed to followers, etc., since the NodeBB installation cannot enforce what other people do with their copies of federated content, etc.

can I explore most of these features via the community demo site ?

Feel free, I'm around if you have any questions.

Shoq

@julian digesting this. The potential is every bit as exciting as I thought it would be 6 months ago. I feel like my life has come full circle. I have always been a fan of forums, and always felt they were completely underdeveloped. It’s like everybody cloned the phpbb model and that was as far as it ever went. You’re reawakening a real beast potential.