@julian @reiver @jaz I'm a bit sad that I couldn't spend a few days with you. Nice to have met you at fosdem

@devnull Did you happen to speak to anyone about the future of SocialHub while at FediCon? Did your impressions match what Johannes reported in the reboot vs. shutdown topic?

strypey@socialhub.activitypub.rocks I spoke to quite a few people at fedicon about this exact issue.

Many feel that some sort of discussion platform is needed, but for one reason or another SocialHub is not that platform.

They did often agree with my assertion that discussion of activitypub topics should take place on the fediverse itself.

julian:

for one reason or another SocialHub is not that platform.

I'm curious to hear those reasons in some detail, ideally from the horses mouth. Whether here, in the verse (I'm @strypey at mastodon.nzoss.nz), or elsewise (contact info in the profile for that account). That helps us figure out what needs to be done differently. No need to worry about upsetting me, I respect absolute candour, and commit to replying both honestly and respectfully.

julian:

activitypub topics should take place on the fediverse itself.

I agree. As @how said in the against fragmentation topic, SH is part of the fediverse. But it also offers things that ephemeral micro-posting chatter doesn't, not least permanent archiving for later reference, and an entry point for newbies. If it's not doing a good job, let's talk about why, and do something about it.

One thing we could experiment with, if you're keen, is a complete mirror of the existing SH using NodeBB. With full archives, and full federation so anything posted to one can be read on both. That way people can use their forum interface of choice to participate (as well as being able to use other apps via AP federation). It also ends the problem of the existing SH being a SPoF, and thus a source of tension and territorial conflict.

There is no existing, up-to-date exporter for Discourse to NodeBB. One would have to pay someone to do it.

While we (the royal we, NodeBB Inc.) would gladly take your money, you're better off sending it to nitro-porter, whose migrator is OSS.

Yeah. I have no idea how to follow SocialHub discussions Mastodon account. I see this post because I'm following you, but it's disembodied -- I don't see the rest of the thread. And I can search for @community@socialhub.activity.rocks but its profile is empty.

Not only that, If I'm reading it over there, and see something I want to reply to from here, doing the "copy this URL" trick doesn't work. Does that mean I'm not in the fediverse??? Hard to know, but in any case I haven't yet figured out how I can participate in discussions there except by replying to somebody I follow.

@julian

jdp23@neuromatch.social I don't want to get overly technical about it, but that's due to fixable deficiencies in Discourse's AP integration.

I think you should be able to follow the @community@socialhub.activity.rocks actor, no?

The "copy URL" flow is especially prevalent on the fediverse, but Discourse doesn't support it (neither does Ghost, while I am talking about it.)

@julian@community.nodebb.orgI don't want these posts cluttering up my home feed, I just want to be able to read and participate in the conversations. On Bluesky there's an ATProto feed that's got a bunch of discussion, I can check it when I feel like it (and people who want to can add it to their home feed) and reply

@julian Also, speaking of fixable deficiencies, my edits here don't seem to propagate to SocialHub . Without knowing the code I'm confident it's fixable because my edits did propagate to the NodeBB thread at https://community.nodebb.org/topic/18932/final-thoughts-re-fedicon-2025/14 , great to see!

strypey:

julian:

discussion of activitypub topics should take place on the fediverse itself.

I agree. As @how said in the against fragmentation topic, SH is part of the fediverse.

imo this is one of those points that sounds better than it actually is. being "on the fediverse" or "part of the fediverse" is a meaningless term without providing specifics. what actually matters here is the distribution and aggregation of resources (posts, threads, and so on). it's not broadly useful to have discussions about activitypub "on the fediverse" if those discussions never end up being seen by the people who want to see them.

for a discussion to end up on socialhub, one of the following needs to happen:

• either someone notifies socialhub that their post should be aggregated
• or socialhub crawls the fediverse and proactively aggregates posts

again, it's a distribution problem. keeping socialhub "in the loop" is necessary if you want your post to end up on socialhub. this can happen via fedi or it can happen via web ui. but it's automatic if you do it via the web ui, whereas if you do it via fedi you have to remember to send your post to the appropriate actor. the UX of participating in actual threads and including aggregators is very bad in the current fedi softwares -- usually, you have to include a mention of the actor who manages the thread in every single post you care to end up there, and there isn't a straightforward way to make that actor aware of old posts. this is why federation without any additional considerations is bad -- it leads to context collapse. you can't consider only federation, but instead you need to consider federation how, and with whom, and with which expectations.

for these reasons, i can't agree that "discussions of activitypub topics should take place on the fediverse" unless/until the fediverse becomes aware of the concept of discussions as separate from reply trees, and subsequently knows where to send all relevant notifications.