Last Meeting

Recording

https://us06web.zoom.us/rec/share/4hGBTvgXJPlu8UkjkkxVARypNg5DH0eeaKlIBv71D4G3lokYyrCrg7cqBCJmL109.FsHYTZDlVvZXrgcn?startTime=1712254114000 Passcode: z+1*4pUB

Minutes

To refresh your memory, you can read the minutes of last week's meeting here.

Follow up

The Social Web Community Group approved our application to turn this into a Task Force. Async work will happen across any federated platform followed by either (or both) of these categories Category on NodeBB (@[email protected]) Category on SocialHub (@[email protected])

Next Meeting

We're going to have our next meeting in the first week of May.

Time

Please vote in our meeting poll. Whatever time we decide for this one, we'll aim to keep as our regular monthly slot.

Agenda

Please see this google doc. Everyone has comment permission. Julian will incorporate comments into the agenda.

Our May meeting will be on Thursday, May 2 from 1700 to 1800 UTC. Check out the Agenda prep here https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/agenda-prep-for-may-wg-meeting/4117 Here's the video-call link we'll use (we're going to give Jitsi a try). https://meet.jit.si/moderated/9c481833cd57ccddab05ac977217ca5db63a209fbfee3f82b1627d4e0548190b All are welcome!

devnull: If there’s a specific ID I was to use, it wasn’t readily apparent, that’s all. Fair! I've made a PR to add the post object's id to the "ActivityPub modal" for a post to make this more transparent. https://github.com/discourse/discourse-activity-pub/pull/85

Update! The meeting will now be at 1700 UTC on May 2. This works slightly better to allow more folks to come. The Discourse plugin just sent out an Update activity with the new time, but just in case anyone misses it, here's another Note (i'll ping the mailing list too).

Very useful! Thanks for doing that. This generally chimes with my current understanding of the role of the audience property. It is making me think we may need an "Addressing" FEP to describe how to use audience AND to/bto/cc/bcc . I'm curious to get others' takes on what we've already laid out, and what you've just dug up. cc @devnull @pfefferle @nutomic @eprodrom

angus:

Implementations

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/159_K48ICn53IYOIr0KT39luVJCqBBmmpLeL6Puc7XLE/edit?usp=sharing

I've added an implementation spreadsheet and some prior discussions on this front for our June meeting.

@devnull By-the-by it strikes me that these implementation spreadsheets we're making should be synthesised in some way at some point. My gut is that this would make a good masters or PhD thesis for someone, i.e. a knowledge graph or onotology or something like that of the actual Fediverse (i.e. how it's actually implemented). We'd just need to find the right enthusiastic (and funded) academic...

@silverpill I was actually unclear on Mitra's approach to 1b12 and 400e. Would you mind adding in a Yes in the right column (and any notes) to the spreadsheet?

julian:

This is where there is some potential to trailblaze as the other half of the equation might be implementing 7888, aka a resolvable context.

I have a feeling that context and target would work well to point to the same thing.

Agreed! The Discourse plugin treats them as equivalents, with a preference for context over target.

def create_collection(post) # See https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/400e/fep-400e.md # See https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/standardizing-on-activitypub-groups/1984 raw_collection = object.context || object.target ... julian:

My assumption was that the surveys and spreadsheets would be helpful to guide discussion at WG meetings, but eventually lead to a SocialCG report of non-normative findings, followed by a recommendation for new implementors.

Also agreed, that is my thinking too. I just meant that when I was making the spreadsheet it occurred to me that it could also be the basis for an academic project. Perhaps I'm also just being lazy and thinking of who would be enthusiastic about and have the time to do this kind of thing comprehensively.

Hey guys, looking forwarding to seeing you at the meeting today. We have a new video-call url:

We're getting the link updated on our SocialCG event too.

julian:

It depends on where the topic first started. If a topic started on i.e. SocialHub then it makes sense that the canonical URL should be SocialHub. If it started on the NodeBB community it should be that. This might've been implied in your post, but I wanted to make sure!

Yes, that is my understanding. For example, the canonical url of this topic would be

https://community.nodebb.org/topic/18050/how-do-you-use-context-if-at-all julian:

Secondly, it would not be correct to set a resolvable context as the canonical URL if that context resolves to an AP implementer following FEP 400e, unless you also keep track of whether all items in that context were Add'd and can confirm that all items are in that collection.

I'm not sure I quite agree here, albeit I may be misunderstanding your meaning. I don't think the "canonical" nature of the context should be dependent on the fidelity of the context's object (e.g. the context's collection) to all activities made with respect to it, or dependent on the context owner following a particular approach (beyond the necessities I've laid out below).

I feel like requiring activity fidelity makes the use of the context a bit too circumspect as there will always be a possibility that some actor interacting with it does not consider the context to have treated its activities appropriately.

Consider the following

• Discourse and NodeBB both consider the context of this topic (i.e. the one we're in right now) to be the canonical context, as represented in the canonical url

  https://community.nodebb.org/topic/18050/how-do-you-use-context-if-at-all

• Another platform, let's call it "SEOmaster" has also published some activities in this context, however for whatever reason they are not winding up in the context's collection, and not appearing in the topic representations on nodebb and socialhub. There could be many reasons for this, ranging from an issue with their activity formatting, to connection issues, to an issue with the actor etc.

• NodeBB has implemented FEP 400e compatibility, in addition to 1b12 support, in some form.

• SEOmaster, as its name implies, has amazing SEO. Because it doesn't consider its rejected activities to be treated appropriately. It feels justified in setting the canonical URL as a URL with its domain and points out that NodeBB is compatible with FEP 400e.

Now, the above could well happen anyway, without any justification, if SEOmaster were to ignore any convention we devise here. However I think the convention we set should be as robust as possible. Making it subject to the specific implementation of the context feels like a hostage to fortune to me.

That said, I do think that, to be considered a "canonical" context for the purposes of a forum the following needs to be true:

1. context is resolvable.
2. It resolves to a Collection.
3. The Collection has a resolvable url.

For a forum I think we need to at least require the context to be a Collection, otherwise it can't be a canonical context for a topic.

Hello everyone!

Julian and I are both thinking that it probably doesn't make sense to hold an in-person meeting in July, as the agenda is effectively the same as our one in June, and right now there is just some work that needs doing (particularly by me!). A call would not be time well spent right now.

The work of our group continues here in our federated categories and we're looking forward to seeing everyone in August

@codenamedmitri Is it possible to make a note on our calendar entry about this? Thanks