Search engines would not see them.

This doesn't seem to be true.

The content of Julian's post at https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/hi-julian-i-wonder-how-search-engines-and-seo-will/4135/12?u=stevebate is indexed with both socialhub and nodebb URLs.

Google SERP screenshot:

@julian The URL of this topic is https://community.nodebb.org/topic/17867/pre-alpha-activitypub-related-bug-reports
When I make a request with AP Accept header, the server responds with a Collection. Technically, this is not wrong, but I think most people would expect a top-level post (Note / Article) when making such request

@silverpill@mitra.social you're the first person to have noticed!

It's by design, but of course, can — and maybe should — change. It's part of @trwnh@mastodon.social's FEP-7888 and its concept of a resolvable collection.

Mapping the topic URL to the top post (or perhaps a redirect to it) would ensure compatibility with Mastodon, but I am unsure of whether that is the best path forward.

@julian @silverpill why would anyone expect a Note/Article when fetching the URL for an entire thread/topic?

@trwnh @julian @silverpill I'd only expect a Note/Article when explicitly requesting the first post in a thread/topic, not when fetching the topic itself

@thisismissem@hachyderm.io @trwnh@mastodon.social that was my thought as well, and why NodeBB currently responds as it does.

Ideally it could be both an Article and a Collection, but now we're really committing to incompatibility there lol

cc @silverpill@mitra.social

@julian @trwnh @silverpill I mean... theoretically ActivityPub allows for multi-typed objects due to json-ld

But will anyone understand that correctly? No idea.

@thisismissem @julian @silverpill you could generate a document that is both an Article and a Collection but i'm gonna go out on a limb and say that this is probably *not* what you want. it's a thread. a thread is a Collection of posts. it's already "ideal" to represent it as a Collection and not an Article.

i suspect the source of confusion is that most other projects don't have threads/topics, they have reply trees which they show below the "top level" post. The URL there is for the post.

@trwnh @julian Because it is not clear how client should display this collection. Searching for URL is a common UI pattern: user expects to see a post or a profile as a result (this is not unique to Mastodon).

Server can attempt to fetch the first item in a collection, but NodeBB's FEP-7888 collection doesn't identify itself as a "thread". It has "OrderedCollectionPage" type and properties that many other collections also have

@silverpill@mitra.social said:

NodeBB's FEP-7888 collection doesn't identify itself as a "thread".

That's because I am not aware of a clear way to signal that my collection is a thread.

Lemmy uses as:Page, which is far too generic of an object type to signal as a thread. Mastodon doesn't even have an external concept of a conversation (oStatus conversation notwithstanding)

@trwnh@mastodon.social

@julian Another report: when NodeBB generates an Announce(Create) activity, the ID of Announce has wrong origin. Here's an example:

{
  "@context": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "actor": "https://community.nodebb.org/category/30",
  "id": "https://mitra.social/objects/01920059-5b7c-203f-fc4e-285ec442c032#activity/announce/1726582718443",
  "object": ...
  "type": "Announce"
}

ID indicates that activity has originated on my server, but this is not possible

@silverpill @julian Searching for the URL should give you what that URL represents. If you want the post, search for the URL of the post specifically.

@julian @silverpill We could define a dedicated type for Thread or Conversation or whatever you want to call "a Collection that contains only "post" objects", but it would still be a Collection as well. I think this was something I was considering for a FEP that I ended up never really writing because it felt unnecessary and also very premature. The general idea is to define some way to know what a Collection "contains" -- is it a Conversation or a MediaAlbum or whatever. The problem is taxonomy

@julian @silverpill Really we need to take a step back and first define what a "post" object is. I'm tentatively leaning toward "any object that has content", but I'm sure there are plenty of edge cases I haven't accounted for that will pop up when thinking more deeply about the issue.

@trwnh @julian @silverpill Content types? Note, Article, Image, Video, Audio, Document? That should cover most Web content collections.

If you want to add an extension (Listicle, say) you could multi-type with the most appropriate Activity Vocabulary content type (`type`: ['buzz:Listicle', 'as:Article']`).

@trwnh @julian @silverpill

Jargon term, should define:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listicle

@julian @silverpill @trwnh So, what about returning the root object, like a `Note` or `Article`, with `replies` and `context` included?

@evan @julian @silverpill This goes back to a convo from yesterday about how to handle Activity types with content, which conceivably makes them "posts" in the sense of an "activity stream". ("John Created a Note" is a first-class item in much the same way "Sally Liked a Note" is also a first-class item in Facebook's activity feed, or "Alice Added 9 Images to a MediaAlbum" would be.)

If you put content on an Announce, then that Announce is ostensibly its own "post" in addition to being a share.

@evan @julian @silverpill But yes, in most cases, you will probably be using types such as Note or Article.

@trwnh @julian @silverpill OK. I mean, we just call that an `Object`.