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Mon, 20 Feb 2023 07:25:56 +0100

atomicpoet@mastodon.social

@fediversenews Just in case you don't know what Discourse is, here's the Wikipedia article on it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_(software)

This is going to be *huge* for group functionality adoption in the Fediverse!

show all 8 comments

Mon, 20 Feb 2023 10:29:38 +0100

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Chris Trottier I expect this to introduce yet another forum/group standard to the Fediverse in addition to the several incompatible standards we already have.

#Guppe has its own standard which is created around #Mastodon and Mastodon only.
#Friendica has its own standard.
#Hubzilla and #Streams have their own common standard.
#Lemmy has its own standard.

And now #Discourse will most likely create an entirely new ActivityPub-based forum standard from scratch, disregarding any compatibility to the projects mentioned above. I wouldn't be surprised if the Discourse devs didn't know there's more to the Fediverse than just Mastodon, that there are already forum standards. Either that, or they know, and they can't decide which one to adhere to, so they make a new one from scratch. Or they simply can't make Discourse compatible to any one existing standard, and they're forced to make a new one.

Just to illustrate the problem: Hubzilla is technically a fork of Friendica. Both have forums which are nothing but regular accounts/channels with special rights settings. But Hubzilla's backend was largely rewritten, and internally, Hubzilla uses an entirely different protocol than Friendica. Before #ActivityPub came around, Friendica and Hubzilla used the #Diaspora protocol to federate, so much different are they.

@Fediverse News is a forum on Friendica. Hubzilla, however, doesn't recognise threads from Fediverse News as such. Each post shows up separately as an individual, stand-alone post on my stream, cluttering it. I have to look up the sources (which almost always lead me to Mastodon) to be able to see them in threads.

Mon, 20 Feb 2023 11:23:44 +0100 zuletzt bearbeitet: Mon, 20 Feb 2023 11:24:43 +0100

smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)

smallcircles@social.coop

@jupiter_rowland @atomicpoet @fediversenews

This is why it is important to consider the #Fediverse Enhancement Proposal (FEP) process at #Codeberg and discuss on the #SocialHub developer community (Discourse) forum.

For instance #Lemmy has recently led a #FEP proposal about #ActivityPub Group support to finalization.

See https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep and https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks

There's also a new FEP about process to define new Vocabulary Extensions: https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/fep-1570-the-fep-ontology-process/2972

Wed, 22 Feb 2023 00:05:05 +0100

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

Come to think of it, if #Discourse had been around a decade or so ago, it would not only have been exactly what everyone expects upon reading this (full bidirectional federation), but the other way around.

It wouldn't have been Discourse offering federation. It would have been #Friendica drilling into Discourse's databases and latching onto whatever they would have found. That's how they federated with #Diaspora as well. No #API, no problem.

Maybe you may have needed an account on a Discourse forum, but you might have been able to remote-control it from Friendica.

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 17:35:13 +0100

flesh roots :debian: ?

fleshroots@social.linux.pizza

@jupiter_rowland
Didn't they say much of their spec will be based on Lemmy?
@fediversenews

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 18:00:26 +0100

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@flesh roots :debian: ? If that was the case, and if they kept their eyes on Lemmy and ported changes in Lemmy to Discourse, that'd mean much less trouble. We'd still have the limited functionality, but at least we'd be alerted on our timelines/streams about new threads to look up, all without unnecessary masses of compatibility hackery code. And the Discourse devs wouldn't have to develop everything from scratch.

ActivityPub introducing more specific common standards for groups/forums would help a great deal, too.

I expect Friendica forums to be more compatible with Hubzilla soon (this runs over ActivityPub, too), so the islands may actually be joining.

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 18:48:01 +0100

Stark

Stark9837@techhub.social

@jupiter_rowland @fediversenews

How do services like #lemmy and #discourse federate with #Mastodon? For example, my #instance has a 1000 character limit. Does that mean the #server rejects any federated posts that it receives over that limit? Would it be able to work with such services?

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 20:03:58 +0100

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Stark If it did, then #Lemmy would be the only project in the #Fediverse whose posts #Mastodon rejects or truncates if they go over an instance's character limit.

Longer posts are known to get through from all other known projects, so I wouldn't worry about that.

And #Discourse won't federate entire threads with all posts into the Fediverse, nor will you be able to participate in a thread on Discourse from Mastodon. It'll only announce new threads, i.e. what you'll get is the thread title with a link to the thread. If you want to join the discussion, you'll have to visit the forum itself.

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 20:11:54 +0100

Stark

Stark9837@techhub.social

@jupiter_rowland

That ruins the fun that the #fediverse introduces for me. The #mastodon apps that I use have now become like #rss readers, but I can actually interact with content.

I can follow people, #tags, and #groups, and I can easily mute and block people. I think them getting into the #fediverse is just to make themselves relevant again because they aren't doing it for real. I have seen more posts about #discourse in the last 2 days than my entire life.

But then again, maybe, just maybe, it can be a catalyst to lead people here. Because they can't do the same with #Twitter because they no longer have a #api to interact with.