I had the opportunity to work with the team at OpenBeta on the re-launching of their community forums. They're one of our earliest v4 testers, since they've agreed to have ActivityPub enabled!
(Okay, more realistically I dragged them into it kicking and screaming, but they did provide the opportunity for the forum relaunch, so I'm taking the opportunities as they come!)
During the prep, I discussed some of the well-trodden concept of the fediverse to my co-admin, Ben (bean@community.openbeta.io and also bean@uvix.cc)... stuff I'm sure you've come across:
- Fragmented nature of conversations
- The idea of an instance
- Content discovery with respect to the follow-relationship model
... and wouldn't you know it, it's really hard to discuss these ideas, and Ben is actually fairly well-versed! He ran his own Iceshrimp instance, so all of this wasn't exactly new to him.
Part of it was that I had been steeped in the ActivityPub dev scene for almost a year, so it's hard to step back and explain to ~~mere mortals~~ ~~laymen~~ non-developers what exactly all this ActivityPub nonsense is.
All I know it gets me thinking that I need to work with andypiper@macaw.social on documentation!
That new NodeBB instance, by the way, is https://community.openbeta.io/ :)
Omega,
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Hey, In reverse I do the replying
I genuinely never encountered the "past tense" of the word until Activity Pub hit the scene and nothing happens, no connection. If I am dull. So be it. You know. This is really the marketing / communication point.
Guess what, federated still doesn't click, it is a mental block, I haven't gotten to the bit where I have the physical analogue for federated.
Say for example after we get over the amazeballs of email analogue relation "mail" (or post/postal), then we come across the CC or BCC, wow a mass mail out, basically wow that's cool, oh what there is junk mail too? All these existing real world analogs perfectly communicated in a few words or just word, the analogous precedence experience.
Federated. None.
The email domain example is used, I had to read it twice, I got it the second time, but the engine still don't start. No fire lit. We're talking the light bulb moment and this is very different to the multitude of technical lightbulbs the tec/dev will encounter, the end user in the main, will not care to know as they will never have time to know, that's the mass market, one lightbulb for all and that should be enough.
What I need to do, personally, is hands on, set up activity pub technically on something somewhere to enjoy the whole, to take the next step whenever that happens.
I dunno yet if Activitypub is "wouldn't' it be cool if..." or "how did we do x to get to y before we had z, I'll never know!", the later is pending the former not unusual to be consigned to the dung heap of things time forgot.
Additionally, there are now people who have completely grown up in and live too much in cyberspace and cyberspace is actually retarding real space IMHO, the problems of cyberspace do not necessarily solve the problems of living space as much as they use to (mail > email). I think we're at a point where the things we engage and do are consuming more than it is now returning, and Ai is a clear milestone on that front.
Broad points, but here is the challenge, explain Acitivyt Pub in 20 maybe 30 words, within or not a NodeBB context, or both.
How about that as a challenge?