What is a "Question", really?

julian

I suspect I know the answer already based on what I've read from the sidelines from other devs, but it seems the "Question" activity has been co-opted by other implementors (not naming names) and used in a way that is close to the ActivityStreams definition of Question, but not quite.

Specifically, it seems like Question is an extension of Note, as opposed to its own separate extension of IntransitiveActivity — it contains an id, content, etc.

Fine, it is what it is, but its current usage also might preclude its use by NodeBB to denote a topic as a Q&A-style with a definite "answer".

It might be worth pursuing an implementation of this where Q&A style topics are represented as Question, with replies part of the oneOf property, with the selected answer in the result. How other implementors will handle this... who knows heh.

smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)

@julian

When projects decide to 'bend' designs in their favor and implement non-compliant mechanisms, they're taking a calculated risk.

The next project faces a similar decision. Follow the leader (post-facto interop), custom mechanism (ad-hoc interop), or follow a standards proces and eventual open standards compliance (FEP --> W3C)?

With protocol decay & tech debt imho biggest challenge of the Fediverse, I'd advocate the latter. Stimulate interop as intended. Non-compliance gets sidelined.