@trwnh maybe we have different ideas of semantics. for me, specifying an addressee 100% changes the meaning of an utterance. if i yell “fire” at a rifleman, it means something different than yelling “fire” in a crowded theater. the meaning isn’t just the replied/quoted post plus my post; it also includes the relation my audience has to my post. more broadly: meaning is a function of how an audience relates to an utterance, so signaling the audience and intended relationship changes the meaning

@trwnh a further way of looking at this: a quote is a way of replying and expanding audience; of bringing new people into the conversation

@trwnh this also distinguishes things majorly from forum style inline quoting which is mostly about referring to pieces of a previous message

@trwnh Maybe I'm not getting what you're trying to achieve. My point was that it will probably be impossible to enumerate every kind of relationship between two posts. We have "replies", "for example", "see also", "source", "rebuttal", "review", and the list goes on.
Am I missing what you're after?

@foolishowl interesting. for

> like a review of another microblog post or thread

is there any meaning attached to the relationship, or is the meaning in the act?

> a deliberate change of context, making it a special case of a reply

these are semantically `context` and `inReplyTo`. how does a quote differ from replying to something but changing the context?

@trwnh been pondering this. I think the cleanest relationship I've been able to come up with is that a quote post recontextualizes the original post. it removes it from its original context and places it in a new context.

@tom @erincandescent so is it always a response, or only sometimes? is emphasis/explanation a type of response?

@erincandescent @trwnh Yeah that and here one way I like using quotes is to somewhat fork the thread, like to avoid derailing the existing discussion.

@trwnh when I think about it, ActivityStreams 1 had a comment objectType. This is distinct from note, which top level posts typically were.

In AS1 you might have expressed "quote semantics" with a non-comment reply

@trwnh As I understand it, the main concerns are also the main reasons it would be useful: the ability to easily find the original poster, also the ability to reframe the post into a context more relevant to your stream.

@tech_himbo well sure, but that’s “meaning” in a functional sense as tou point out. like intention.

“semantics” here is descriptive. it asks “what is the nature of the relationship between the current thing and the linked thing”. if viewing a “quote post” in isolation, can we represent it through a combination of existing properties, or does it deserve its own new property?

we have `context`, inReplyTo`, `to` or `cc` or `audience`, even `tag` or `attachment`, and so on. can we just use these?

@trwnh the relationship between a quoted post and the one that quotes it is that of a dunk and a dunkee. a strawman and the argument that shreds it. a screencap and the accompanying roast text.
its purpose is to elevate the quoter literally above the quoted and profit off the difference.

I fuckin' hate quote shit

@joelving i’m trying to do protocol stuff, even knowledge modeling.

we have context, audience, to, cc, inReplyTo, tag, attachment — do we need quote/quoteOf?

To me, in Smithereen, it's a link preview that's getting some special treatment and that you create with a dedicated UI. The difference between quotes and link previews is that I don't do link previews yet. The semantic relationship is the same as when I link something in my own post. To quote something means to include it as part of your own post, possibly adding your own comment, to have a conversation about it with your followers.

@trwnh @darius I think the difference between a quote post and a simple link preview is that I expect the quote post to be more “live“. I think from a semantic perspective that means that whatever software is doing the reading understand that it is a post. I think (but I am not certain) that was missing right now, semantically, is about the post part, not the quoting per se.

@trwnh @darius In practical terms, I think the most important implication of that is that when I tap on it, my client should open it as a post, not a webpage. Also, embedded media should be live.

There are open UI questions about whether other things about the quoted post should be inherited by the parent, things like content warnings (probably) and @ mentions (probably not), but those all depend on semantically understanding that the thing is a post to start with.

@trwnh No, not always.

For instance, let's say a podcast makes a post about their new episode. I loved the episode so I want to share it to my followers.

I could just boost if, but instead I "quote post", adding: "whoa, great new episode of this podcast. I've you've ever been curious to check the show out this would be a good one to start with."

I would not consider that a "response" because it's not addressing the original poster

@trwnh For me, it’s exactly what it’s called: a quote. If I’m quoting someone else’s post, the relationship is closer to “quoting + citing the source”, but if I’m quoting my own post, the relationship is “quoting = highlighting a specific previous statement, e.g. as a follow-up”.

@djsundog so is it enough to change the `context`, or is there something else missing?

@trwnh the quote post is a commentary/reaction/repost+. A Quote-post only makes sense if the post you're quoting itself is necessary for your post to make sense. The relationship is important (otherwise a screenshot would work) it's kind of a reply that wants to either address a different audience, wants to shift the conversation to a different aspect of the original discourse etc.