Minutes from 2 May 2024 WG Meeting

julian

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

Participants

in order of appearance

Dmitri invited participants to the regular SWICG call tomorrow; best place to be informed of upcoming events: SocialCG calendar — "please come by, it is free for everyone to join or listen in"
Angus provided an update to the working group's inclusion under the banner of the Social Web Incubator Community Group (SWICG), revised name would be the Forums and Threaded Discussions Task Force, or "ForumWG" for short.
Julian provided an update on this past month's usage of the fediverse to hold asynchronous discussion, a number of threads have been started on the respective forum categories (both of which federate out) for the working group pertaining to discussions re: agenda items, and have been fairly well received.
Angus and Julian will update the respective handles of their categories to reflect the new working group name

"Lay of the Land" survey reports

Angus: The general spirit of these surveys is 'these are the existing X approaches, the plurality may indicate the need to converge'
Nomenclature
- Rimu: Document continues to be expanded upon
- Evan re-iterates that it is unlikely any implementors will change their nomenclature to match
- Angus asks whether participants find utility in the list
- Evan indicates that whatever is decided upon is best used "on-the-wire", Julian agrees and notes that the agreed-upon terminology would be used in the "Definitions" portion of any report written by ForumWG; suggests the list may be best kept as a living reference
- Rimu indicates that as the list grows, alternative ways to represent the data may be required
- Round of applause for Rimu for taking the initiative to start (and now maintain) the list
Object Type (Article vs. Note vs. Page)
- Impetus for topic: WordPress sending out as:Note when as:Article would be more suitable
  - @[email protected] (in topic, paraphrased): Mastodon values microblogging UX and locked down their allowed html to satisfy this constraint, despite Hubzilla's pleas
  - @[email protected] (in topic, paraphrased): Raised issue in 2017 to address issues with inline images being removed. Suggested a compromise: treat Article and Note differently (Note, text only with attachments; Article, full HTML) — Eugen 7 months later closed issue with change to further hamper treatment of Article, by showing only title and link back to source.
  - @[email protected] (in topic): "You can choose 'Note' if you want to have the best compatibility"
- Evan: Whether a note or article is federated, it shouldn't hamper implementation; but as:Page should not be used
- Mattias: Choice is given to user as to how WP maps the native Post object to ActivityPub. Historically sent out Article but received a lot of pushback from early adopters. Difficult to reconcile UX with technical limitations
- Evan: "An as:Note is a Tweet (we just couldn't call it that), an as:Article is a blog post"
- Emelia: "Should software publish different objects based on content length, even if using the same mechanism?"
- a: Big picture view — it doesn't seem complicated, but it is, because the line between them is completely arbitrary.
- Mattias: We try to autodetect (no headers, content length, etc.), would prefer different content types based on what users write, but the advantage is being able to read content natively on the user's platform of choice
- Dmitri: "I think we've got several questions in parallel:
  1. What SHOULD these things (Note & Article) be used for.
  2. What to do about Mastodon who only seems to consume Notes."
- Emelia: Don't Articles usually have titles?
  - Everyone else: crickets (made us think!)
- a: https://wiki.trwnh.com/tech/spec/activitypub/confusion/note-vs-article/ (also indicates using title to discriminate Article vs. Post isn't 100%)
- a: The reason we're talking about this is because of various differring implementations - for example, in one implementor's mental model, you have a thread with a title and that is separate from the posts contained within; posts that may also have titles of their own. How do we reconcile this?
- Julian and Rimu note that @[email protected] replied in-topic: "... we would like to improve how non-Note objects are processed/displayed in Mastodon."
- Julian mentions a compromise put forth by @[email protected] where Notes are smaller pieces of content with limited markup and attachments, and Articles are (sometimes) larger pieces with formatting, inline images. Additional survey/spreadsheet to be created, but we could as a group (Mastodon included) converge on a path forward and a report to the SocialCG could be authored. To be continued next month.
Group Actor characteristics
- 1b12 - announcing the activities of their actors, this is what Discourse and NodeBB do, other implementations have taken this approach
- @[email protected] (paraphrased): "intent of 1b12 is to describe the existing status quo"
- 400e - Pubicly appendable collections; Picked up by a few other folks, also potentially Mastodon (with their new groups implementation)
- How do we treat group actors in forum/threaded implementations?
  - a: 400e - Groups send Add activities, 1b12 - Groups send Announce activities, otherwise, a Group could even send regular Creates (editor's note: this is a dramatic simplication of the actual post here)
  - Evan: announce style makes the most sense, understanding that folks use both - suggestion: document both but let consumers know they'll see one or both
  - Rimu: Implementors can make opinionated decisions on how it should work, and adjust based on the reality of how the major players adopt
  - Angus will continue collating responses into a spreadsheet re: group implementations
Open item: feedback on desired UX (@[email protected])
- Can a group be multiple different things? e.g. a context/thread has some recipients, a context could be an actor. How forums choose to (or could) represent these relationships via ActivityPub is what is currently being solicited
- a: Boils down to "Collections, please use them", but best to start foundationally: Notes in Collections, first.
- Due to lack of time discussion of this will take place asynchronously on the fediverse: https://community.nodebb.org/post/99491 (if this does not open in your client, paste it into the search box)
- Julian provided one user story: "If you want to share a context to others, one should share the higher-ordered collection, and not what we do today, which is to share the url/object uri for OP."
  - A suitable implementation could see that and backfill the entire context locally, and redirect the user to the first object.
- Angus noted that Discourse already has some support for Collections, will provide details async on forum topic (linked above)

Action Items

@[email protected] and @[email protected] will update the respective handles of their categories to reflect the new working group name
@[email protected] to collate responses to Article vs. Name among implementors, supply recommendation at next meeting.
@[email protected] to collate responses re: Group federation among implementors, continue discussion next meeting
@[email protected] to solicit feedback asynchronously via the fediverse

Evan Prodromou

@julian Great work, thank you!

Adam Nelson

@julian @dmitri @angus @rimu @evan @pfefferle @thisismissem @trwnh @jupiter_rowland @mikedev @renchap @nutomic I keep missing these! The first one I had something come up that conflicted with it, but this one I must have just forgotten to put on my calendar. Maybe I'll catch the next one.

julian

@[email protected] Let me add you to the list-of-people-to-mention whenever something is scheduled

Evan Prodromou

@julian @arnelson We should also probably put it on the SocialCG calendar. @dmitri ?

julian

@[email protected] slightly ahead of you there https://community.nodebb.org/topic/18010/adding-forum-task-force-calls-to-the-calendar

silverpill

@julian

@grishka What are your thoughts on FEP-400e vs FEP-1b12 question? Is there a good reason to pick one over another?

Mike Macgirvin 🖥️

Our conversation container work is based on and very closely related to fep-400e; and the biggest difference in my view is that it provides a mechanism for supporting protected/restricted audiences. Under fep-1b12 you're very much restricted to everything being public, as third parties need permission to fetch the Announce'd objects and this is very difficult to achieve without having advance knowledge of all the third parties - as bearcap/token based solutions currently have issues with de-duplication of content and correctly assigning contexts. We've currently got a hybrid model in place which theoretically supports both models for public groups/forums, but it's somewhat wasteful in resources. The container/collection model can easily support both.

infinite love ⴳ

@mikedev @silverpill how do you feel about the use of `context` in the exact same way that `target` is used (invalidly according to as2-vocab, i might add)?

my understanding is that conversation containers use the same id for `context` and `target`. this is redundant imo, but i suppose that's where we are currently...

julian

@[email protected] @[email protected] as an aside, I am led to believe that 1b12 and 400e are incompatible with each other, which would preclude any implementor from simply implementing both?

Could a potential avenue be making changes to 400e so it can coexist with 1b12 — or vice versa — or is that not an option?

Mike Macgirvin 🖥️

I don't have any serious reservations. Nobody else is doing anything remotely similar to conversation containers and this provided a solid way to identify them outside other uses for collections in a context (of which there are many; groups/fep-400e, photo albums, lists/circles, event calendars, etc.). The missing piece is something like "this context is being used for purpose 'xyz'". That's not an insolvable problem, but I was trying to do so without adding any new vocabulary terms or tags/attachments of some kind.

infinite love ⴳ

@julian @mikedev As you probably already know, I think the better path forward is to use the actual intended property for this, which is context, and to send out Add to Collection instead of sending Announce. The "incompatibility" is simply in payload, but the consequence is significant if you want to support private forums.

infinite love ⴳ

@mikedev Hmm. I think that the "correct" way is to add new vocabulary terms and multitype the collections, so for example [OrderedCollection, Conversation]. But point taken, there is definitely a lack of signaling what exactly a collection is, what does it include, etc.

At least for the forum use-case I was thinking of two new types, a Topic (Collection of post objects), and a Forum (Collection of Topic). names subject to change of course. the pattern is broadly generic but the terminology isnt

Gregory

@silverpill @julian obviously my FEP is superior

The problem with FEP-1b12 is that it just formalizes the fundamentally flawed Announce flow. It's flawed because you have to post to what's essentially *your own personal timeline* to later have the post boosted by the group actor. Because of that, your followers can see the group post, as it technically exists outside of the group.

FEP-400e does not have this shortcoming because you create your posts "into" the group to begin with.

Gregory

@mikedev @silverpill actually, Smithereen has private (invite-only) and closed (manual approval + invites) groups, and I do have an authentication/permission mechanism to go on top of FEP-400e, what I called "actor tokens". I have it documented here: https://github.com/grishka/Smithereen/blob/master/FEDERATION.md#access-control-in-non-public-groups

Never made it a FEP because I thought that the whole FEP process was dead. Should I make one?

[email protected]

It sounds the whole discussion about Note vs Page is really asking how to get Mastodon to display your content better. But I think thats entirely the wrong question to ask. When someone complains to me that Lemmy posts look wrong in Mastodon, I simply point him to the Mastodon issue tracker. Its absolutely none of my concern how other projects render our content. There are dozens of Fediverse projects and I dont have time to go around and change things to satisfy every single one. If Mastodon developers dont want to improve things its their loss. Its important not to get blinded by Mastodons large user numbers. It really is by far the largest Fediverse platform so far, but does that really matter? If you look at centralized social media, there are actually billions of users. So a few years of growth and migration waves could catapult any well-designed project ahead of Mastodon in terms of user numbers. Its much more important to optimize for all these potential future users, rather than appease a minority on Mastodon who sticks to such a badly behaved platform. Also what does Evan mean by saying that Page shouldnt be used? Lemmy uses it since day one without any problems, its a perfectly fine type.

silverpill

@grishka Looks interesting, I think writing a FEP is a good idea. The process is not dead yet

I want to implement private groups too but it is not clear which approach is better. We discussed private groups with @nutomic and he said that FEP-1b12 can also support private groups. There is an RFC, but AFAIK it has not been implemented yet.

And here's the documentation for @mikedev 's Conversation Containers: https://fediversity.site/help/develop/en/Containers

@julian

Gregory

@silverpill @nutomic @mikedev @julian

well, the benefit of my implementation of private groups is that it already exists

I'll write a FEP about my actor tokens.

Mike Macgirvin 🖥️

The container approach works great for private communities because we aren't performing any third party fetches. The relationship is with the group actor, who relays the signed activities within an Add to Collection activity and these can be fetched directly from the group instance by anybody having a relationship with the group actor.

We're using FEP-8b32 (object integrity proofs) for signing these activities because LD-signatures have a number of issues, the most important of which is they have known limitations when nested. So in this case the third party is never fetching the activity from its origin. They have a signed activity delivered to them as the object of the Add activity.

The biggest issue by far with private group posts is the privacy of the original post in the thread. I've been in some heated debates about this. I don't expect anything different now. We revived an old fediverse concept (the bang tag) for privately addressing groups, whether the group is public or private. We also provide post-by-DM for sites that don't support bang tags. Using a bang tag (or DM) to perform an FEP-400e remote post-to-collection has the least user friction. We'll also accept simple @-mentions for public groups for compatibility with the FEP-1b12 mob, but this cannot be used with private groups for hopefully obvious reasons.

In any case, bang tags solve a lot of problems and provides some consistency between public and private groups and folks catch on to them real quick. Especially folks with historical ties to the StatusNet universe.

julian

@[email protected] said in Minutes from 2 May 2024 WG Meeting:

Also what does Evan mean by saying that Page shouldnt be used? Lemmy uses it since day one without any problems, its a perfectly fine type.

That might've been a simplification on my part. The distinction was between Article, Note, and Page and being displayed in-app with rich HTML support.

Page, as per spec, is better handled how Mastodon already handles it: a short summary with a link to the original page.

Correct me if I'm wrong @[email protected] ?