@foolishowl okay, that helps a bit. mostly i am trying to figure out how to describe (from a knowledge standpoint) what that “dependency” is.

like if i said “A isQuoteOf B”, how would one define “isQuoteOf”? does a meaningful definition actually exist or not? it is seeming like “not”. a “quote post” is more a function of context, audience, notification, link preview… but it’s not clear where to actually put the link itself.

@joelving for semantic purposes, we refer to the Object as “inReplyTo”, “reviewOf”, “seeAlso”, etc. This is generally equivalent to having Link rel=inReplyTo and so on.

functionally, we need a place to put the Link, if going with a Link. perhaps attachment or tag — those two properties are a sort of grab-bag of generic Links at times.

@trwnh I’m not a web developer or anything so I can’t exactly speak to the HTML equivalent, but yes, it does look like this indented format in my mind. But it doubles as a “citation” because someone reading my post can tap in to the original post to get the full context (analogous to how one might go hunt down the primary source when reading material that quote/cite from it).

@trwnh @tech_himbo hah maybe not! I'm sure there's a clever way to combine existing properties and indicate "this is a quote post". But I can also imagine this making things more convoluted for implementers than just using a new attribute.

I also think there will be large UI / display differences across different content types, e.g. short Note vs long Article. So a new attribute might be too limited to cover all cases (like multiple embedded quotes).

@agnes okay, thank you! it sounds like “quote posts” are primarily about citing some other post in full. would you agree?

@trwnh @tech_himbo so I guess the answer is I don't know lol.

And maybe one solution is just covering the use case(s) we have today, and then evolve it as more people implement / we run into limitations.

@trwnh
I'm not sure I understand that question, but...

Perhaps the way to think of this is that the client should have some indication of whether the post should be threaded with replies or not.

Quote-posts probably should not be -- they're the head of their own new thread.

Of course, the client will actually make this design decision, so we're just hinting to it with the data structure.

(Perhaps the OP should have some way to find those, I guess, but it shouldn't be a default).

@matt @tech_himbo i dont think we can cover the use case without first defining it in a clear and meaningful way

i mean, sure, we could have toot:quoteOf whose definition is “whatever mastodon does”. but that’s mixing app-specific concerns into the generic description framework.

@TerryHancock yeah, “threading” is (or should be) dependent on context (the grouping of strongly related objects)

in this model, changing the context is like starting a new thread.

the part i’m trying to figure out is if this is enough to describe what a “quote post” is doing. changing context, notifying the author, setting the audience to your own followers, etc

@trwnh Yes, and if that post is part of a thread, implicitly citing the whole conversation to provide full context, if whoever reading is interested. Hope it’s OK that mine is not a technical answer

@agnes no, it’s good! i want a non-technical answer. at least one divorced from “tech” in the sense of “how do i get computers to do this” and more relevant to knowledge description in the sense of “what’s really going on here in the bigger picture”

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

PROV-O: The PROV Ontology

(www.w3.org)

@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