2.5 hours later and the general trend seems to be:

- there isn’t a clear semantic definition for “isQuoteOf” when considering “A isQuoteOf B”
- it is at best a form of citation in full
- we might put it in the generic grab-bag properties of attachment or tag, but it ultimately represents *something* which differs on a case-by-case basis (so a quote post might also be a response/inReplyTo, or something else entirely)

@trwnh by this logic, shouldn’t we replace inReplyTo=otherPost with context=otherPost & a tag to signify that the current post is a reply?

@tech_himbo nah, context is like the grouping or “thread”

but it is technically valid to frame it as an Annotation of the original object where purpose=response, or a Reply activity, or some other things. just that for our purposes we can directly relate “A inReplyTo B” whereas we can’t meaningfully say “A quoteOf B”

@trwnh Scanning the thread to date, I think an answer might be something like:

“I am referencing this resource, and I have something to say about it”

Which is a bit like an inverse of ‘rdfs:comment’, except that the description referenced by that is a string value (so not another AS object).

So maybe something like:

“Is a commentary about”

?

I wonder if the PROV vocabulary has anything with appropriate semantics; eg

https://www.w3.org/TR/prov-o/#wasDerivedFrom

@gklyne yeah “commentary on” could work but not always

“citation of” seems to be the best option so far but idk i’m still thinking about it

@trwnh how would you model a citation in this framework? that is, if my post cites another post, would it get the “annotation of type cites” treatment, or the “myPost cites otherPost” treatment?

@tech_himbo assuming we both agree on what "cites" means, and that it is similar enough to what is really going on with a "quote post", then we would say "<my post> -- cites -> <some other post>"

the working definition for now is "cites" = "quote as verbatim", loosely, but could probably be extended as a general citation framework?

i think there is a bit of a potential complication because this network isn't limited to short-form notes or any particular length. what if you cite an Article?

@trwnh yeah, “cites” and “quotes” are likely distinct. you could cite a source without quoting its contents, for example. but quoting probably implies citing, so a “quote post” is roughly “a post which cites one other post and includes part of the cited post.” with this definition, you could have a general citation framework, and let UIs treat single-citation posts as quote posts

i’d love a general citation framework too. would be nice to link to a list of sources without clogging a post body

@tech_himbo idk if they're distinct enough but i do think that thinking of them as "cites" is probably close enough to warrant further thought and investigation

it's at least close enough for knowledge modeling purposes but for protocol purposes probably they only care about one cite at most -- which one?

we have the same problem rn in fedi where inReplyTo can be plural, but everyone treats it as singular

that and being able to quote Articles is i think the two biggest ux concerns

@trwnh That had me wondering if there’s anything in the Citation Ontology (Cito) that might work? (e.g. https://sparontologies.github.io/cito/current/cito.html#d4e118).

@gklyne yeah cito:cites could work directly or otherwise a property that defines it as an equivalent property or subproperty