NodeBB-ActivityPub Bridge Test Instance

@julian@community.nodebb.org It would be good for outgoing posts if cross posting is used for synced categories. But it doesn't solve the problem of incoming posts. For that, it would make sense to still slot incoming posts based on the sync setup. But there is still the problem of Lemmy not accepting follows from category actors.

@pfefferle@mastodon.social just wanted to poke you about this issue again. The latest updates to NodeBB now do a webfinger backcheck to ensure that the actor has a valid webfinger entry for their purported handle. If it does not, then the user is not properly created. Mastodon also does this. This check is probably for security as well as for preventing handle collisions. The multilingual plugin in conjunction with the ActivityPub plugin creates users that share the same handle, and that causes issues with federated content. For example, this article by @jonvt@vivaldi.com will load up just fine in Mastodon, but this japanese article by @akira@vivaldi.com will not, because that second article's attributedTo is https://vivaldi.com/ja/?author=176, which fails that check (the author's ID is actually https://vivaldi.com?author=176 as per the handle backcheck) cc @AltCode

thisismissem:This sounds like a wonderful FEP! This article published two weeks ago mentions the issue (highlight mine) ..Another example I personally encountered was a frustrating issue while implementing ActivityPub for this blog: updating a post propagated to Lemmy but not Mastodon. Despite the Update activity being accepted, Mastodon silently rejected it unless the updated timestamp changed—a logical but unofficial requirement. Developers must track down subtle implementation details that aren't formally documented, significantly complicating adoption and usage.https://chrastecky.dev/technology/activity-pub-the-good-the-bad-and-the-uglyI'd write it off as a Mastodon-ism, but it's actually better to have that property present, so now it is.So one that's becoming de-facto standard. Ideally if Mastodon introduces such logic, it is up to them to remember to inform the broader developer community via a FEP.---Aside: "If all we have is a Note .. "Overall it is such a pity that everything is to be a Note or else.. And the default pragmatic urge of most devs is to assign app-specific business logic to an existing or custom property within it, to create all the behavioral flavors. And then call it a day "my app works" and throw the protocol decay out in the ecosystem.There are other improvements regarding revision control as long-time open issues, see e.g. @trwnh's https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/exposing-edit-history-via-activitystreams/2930 (mastodon issue # dd. January 2023). In this issue @stevebate suggests previousversions from the ForgeFed Vocabulary.What do we do when we "Edit a Note"? Is using the CRUD of ActivityStreams really the best option, or are we really "Creating a Revision". Shouldn't ActivityPub have a proper way to Revision Control across the board?If my new Fediverse app included both editable and non-editable posts, how I'd hack that in on top of the current mechanism? Just pondering this. It seems we go out of our way not to use the extension mechanism of ActivityPub as it was intended to be used, cramming everything in NoteCrud​. Is that official best-practice for the future fediverse now, I wonder.Many more examples seen in discussions. The ActivityPub specs state that you may ditch JSON-LD for plain JSON, but doesn't say that the whole idea of a semantic type model should be thrown out of the window as well. In https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/distinguish-between-posts-and-direct-messages/2283 the example is people going out of their way not to define ChatMessage in favor of Note + property-logic.

@jsonculverhouse@flipboard.social yes, that's right. If a Flipboard post is organized within magazines, then including the magazine in the cc will allow recipient software to correctly slot the post with the magazine. So not only would it fix the issue for NodeBB, it'd also fix it for Lemmy, PieFed, Mbin, etc.

It's not a NodeBB in particular but it's worth mentioning another mismatch: Misskey and forks will also delete replies when a post is deleted.

@hamishcampbell @ricmac @evanprodromou @julian Thanks for your kind words. I won't interrupt your discussion with Julian anymore. I hope you reach some accord!

@thisismissem damn @Sarahp killing it with the fediverse coverage lately!

@trwnh@mastodon.social sure, makes sense. That to/cc already exist in the wild as arrays means one less thing to worry about with multiple cross posts.

@julian we have recently rewritten the addressing logic and it seems mapping the mentions to to for public toplevel posts has fallen short. After fixing this it seems to work fine now: #^https://community.nodebb.org/topic/cbbf1640-2295-4fc5-b86f-5b1fd259cccb/test2@Scott M. Stolz

@julian Nevermind! Typo in the header...

@raphael@mastodon.communick.com hmm interesting, can you share the code that's making the call? Usually if it's working with curl it'll work with Node, so this suggests there's something different with the way the call is made with node. For what it's worth, internally, NodeBB uses the built-in fetch method from Node.js.

@julian Thanks, tells me what I needed to know. Even on Mastodon I only really use Hashtags on posts and not on replies so that tracks for personal usage.

@julian or, rather, if you stretch the concept a little bit, every outbox could represent a "category", just with unknown rules

@devnull@lemmy.ca great! thank you.

test test test

@AltCode One significant potential issues with listing all followed categories in the same kind of layout as /categories is the below-the-fold effect, or the page-2 effect as one might have called it in earlier times. Whatever categories end up falling below a certain scroll distance will just never been seen by most users. If you follow a lot of categories, the ones that end up closer to the bottom of the list than the top will just end up ignored. It doesn't encourage participation, and it also doesn't discourage following a lot of categories that you don't actually care about. And follow relationships are very important under ActivityPub, since they dictate content flow. Bringing in a lot of remote content that no one on the local forum is actually reading or engaging with is very wasteful. An easily accessible compact list might be better, with different sorting options so that users can choose to have categories with new content float to the top. Usually with forum categories, you want the ordering to be static, but that expectation won't necessarily be there for just a list.