Pre-Alpha ActivityPub-related bug reports

julian

NodeBB's FEP-7888 collection doesn't identify itself as a "thread".

That's because I am not aware of a clear way to signal that my collection is a thread.

Lemmy uses as:Page, which is far too generic of an object type to signal as a thread. Mastodon doesn't even have an external concept of a conversation (oStatus conversation notwithstanding)

@[email protected]

silverpill

@julian Another report: when NodeBB generates an Announce(Create) activity, the ID of Announce has wrong origin. Here's an example:

{
  "@context": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "actor": "https://community.nodebb.org/category/30",
  "id": "https://mitra.social/objects/01920059-5b7c-203f-fc4e-285ec442c032#activity/announce/1726582718443",
  "object": ...
  "type": "Announce"
}

ID indicates that activity has originated on my server, but this is not possible

julian

@[email protected] Got it, thanks!

fix: id on 1b12 announces · NodeBB/NodeBB@047d599

Node.js based forum software built for the modern web - fix: id on 1b12 announces · NodeBB/NodeBB@047d599

GitHub (github.com)

infinite love ⴳ

@silverpill @julian Searching for the URL should give you what that URL represents. If you want the post, search for the URL of the post specifically.

infinite love ⴳ

@julian @silverpill We could define a dedicated type for Thread or Conversation or whatever you want to call "a Collection that contains only "post" objects", but it would still be a Collection as well. I think this was something I was considering for a FEP that I ended up never really writing because it felt unnecessary and also very premature. The general idea is to define some way to know what a Collection "contains" -- is it a Conversation or a MediaAlbum or whatever. The problem is taxonomy

infinite love ⴳ

@julian @silverpill Really we need to take a step back and first define what a "post" object is. I'm tentatively leaning toward "any object that has content", but I'm sure there are plenty of edge cases I haven't accounted for that will pop up when thinking more deeply about the issue.

Evan Prodromou

@trwnh @julian @silverpill Content types? Note, Article, Image, Video, Audio, Document? That should cover most Web content collections.

If you want to add an extension (Listicle, say) you could multi-type with the most appropriate Activity Vocabulary content type (`type`: ['buzz:Listicle', 'as:Article']`).

Evan Prodromou

@trwnh @julian @silverpill

Jargon term, should define:

Listicle - Wikipedia

(en.wikipedia.org)

Evan Prodromou

@julian @silverpill @trwnh So, what about returning the root object, like a `Note` or `Article`, with `replies` and `context` included?

Dmitri Zagidulin

Would it make sense to add Thread as another type? (AP objects can have multiple types). So it'd be "type": ["OrderedCollection", "Thread"], that sort of thing?

julian

@[email protected] @[email protected] did mention the same, although support for sending an object with multiple types is unknown (to me, at least).

I fully expect some implementations to break when encountering such a thing.

infinite love ⴳ

@evan @julian @silverpill This goes back to a convo from yesterday about how to handle Activity types with content, which conceivably makes them "posts" in the sense of an "activity stream". ("John Created a Note" is a first-class item in much the same way "Sally Liked a Note" is also a first-class item in Facebook's activity feed, or "Alice Added 9 Images to a MediaAlbum" would be.)

If you put content on an Announce, then that Announce is ostensibly its own "post" in addition to being a share.

infinite love ⴳ

@evan @julian @silverpill But yes, in most cases, you will probably be using types such as Note or Article.

Evan Prodromou

@trwnh @julian @silverpill OK. I mean, we just call that an `Object`.

Evan Prodromou

@trwnh @julian @silverpill especially in a forum thread, right? It's just not the place you put an `TentativeReject` activity or a `Relationship` object.

infinite love ⴳ

@evan @julian @silverpill In terms of a potential WIP FEP, I would tentatively define a Conversation as a Collection where each item has at least `content`. I would likewise define a MediaAlbum as a Collection where each item is an Image or Video. There are probably other type definitions that could make sense.

Evan Prodromou

@trwnh @julian @silverpill yeah, I just don't like the ducktyping on the 'content' property.

Erin 💽✨

@trwnh @julian @silverpill I think the question here is "does a thread actually have any distinct properties of its own?"

Maybe a title, but that can also be inherited from either the first or most recent post. Many threaded discussion systems don't have thread objects at all, of course (email is perhaps the canonical example)

So I lean towards the idea that you should just redirect to the first thread in the post, and place the context (which when becomes just a collection of in-thread posts; an implementation detail) at another URL where it mostly becomes invisible to users.

And I think that's better, especially because having significant semantics on collections starts getting confusing when e.g. you have collection pages flying around

Really I think most types which can be represented directly as a collection (e.g. image galleries) are best represented as an object that possess a collection, though not everyone might agree

infinite love ⴳ

@erincandescent @julian @silverpill It makes sense for threads to have not just their own title, but also their own audience and moderators, as well as flags for whether the thread is pinned or locked.

julian

@[email protected] said:

So I lean towards the idea that you should just redirect to the first thread in the post, and place the context (which when becomes just a collection of in-thread posts; an implementation detail) at another URL where it mostly becomes invisible to users.

That's why I'm still on the fence about this whole thing. In principle, a thread object can and does exist in software, but in practice there is lots of prior art that says otherwise.

That said, email might be a threaded chain of messages, but most email clients I know have standardized around representing them as a discrete topic, if only in the UI.

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]