Hello all :smile:

Today we're releasing NodeBB v4.2.0. Most of the changes pertain to minor updates to our existing ActivityPub integration.

• Categories can now follow regular users
  • v4 launched with the ability for NodeBB to synchronize categories with other "group" type remote accounts. While it was possible to follow regular users, their content did not properly load into the category. This has now been fixed.
• Actual handling (not just pretend ✨) of content from Ghost :ghost:
• Added button to view original profile of remote users
• Better handling of content for remote chat messages (non-public notes)
• Forking and moving posts between topics now announced by the category
• Separate chat message length cutoff for remote messages
• Improved link handling on remote content
• Categories now have a handle in the description; added an additional setting for a remote-only addendum for local categories

The "View Original" button for user profiles is located in the sidebar of any remote user profile:

The upcoming possibility of browsing to remote federated categories/communities has me thinking about interesting use cases for it.

Note that Lemmy, PieFed, mBin, and other "community-centric" software already do support this, so it's nothing new, I'm actually playing catch-up.

One interesting use case centers around NodeBB's /unread route, which tracks new topics since your last visit. Since ever, and even now in v4, this is only for local categories, but if you're able to "subscribe" to a remote category, then we could enable use of this page for that content too.

Think about waking up and seeing a self-curated feed of new content from your subscribed communities! There are some interesting parallels to RSS here, too.

What other forum-centric use cases do you think would be enhanced by the ability to browse remote categories?

Hi @andrew_s@piefed.social/@freamon and @nutomic@lemmy.ml —I'm working (not-so-secretly) on refactoring NodeBB so that it is able to "browse" remote audiences/group actors, and that would include things like PieFed and Lemmy communities.

N.B. Given varied nomenclature (group/category/community/subforum), the ForumWG calls this structure an "audience".

Where I am at now is working through the logic for slotting an object into a category.

The most obvious choice here would be to look at as:audience. It's even specified in 1b12, and the majority of threaded implementations follow 1b12.

I am making this post because nutomic explicitly removed the audience from being served in Lemmy (as of January this year), so I don't think relying on that property would be wise.

I asked in that issue whether Lemmy finds community via to/cc (it does). Does PieFed do the same?

Would this also open up the possibility of a topic/context being part of multiple audiences/communities? Interesting...

@hamishcampbell@mastodon.social recently made a statement that got me thinking about our place in the open social web, and the direction it's going.

He says to @deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org and @evan@cosocial.ca re: SXSW

> #FediverseHouse this feels like an irrelevant echo chamber, I really miss the grassroots #DIY that built this space in the first place. This #maistreaming is too much noise vs signal... currently the grassroots #DIY space is a hollow shell

(two posts combined)

That immediately got me on edge as someone new to ActivityPub in 2024. Does this mean I'm "mainstream", and somehow "bad"?

Mainstream adoption is good and a step in the right direction. I personally think ActivityPub isn't ready for general mainstream consumption, but we as a group are rapidly closing the gap and I'd much rather continue building momentum instead of waiting for the opportune moment.

Here's the hot take that I was going to originally write, but thought came off as too combative:

> It sounds like you feel like ActivityPub development only counts when you're toiling away in obscurity.

As someone who's hacking away on a platform that hasn't been "mainstream" for over a decade (forum/BBS software), I bristle at the notion that what I do doesn't count as grassroots or DIY. You don't have to be the perpetual underdog to do good in the world.

I might be wrong, but it sounds like Hamish feels like big players are coming in and taking the ball away... that big players' clout and presence takes away from the attention that smaller DIY projects receive.

Maybe... but if the fediverse is 100x larger with a big player, and they take 99% of the eyeballs, have they really taken anything away from you?

March 2025 ForumWG Minutes

Apologies in advance if I misrepresented anybody or missed any crucial bits of information.

• Julian provided a brief summary of the state of conversational contexts
  • two-pronged approach: top down (feps), bottom up (implementors)
  • IceShrimp.NET (waiting and watching)
    • Already exposes context collections, integration testing pending
  • Mitra
    • Implemented (top-level only) context collections of objects, tested and working
• Julian said 7888 is object-based contexts, 171b is activity-based contexts and notes that activity-based context can be more comprehensive (incl. likes, reactions, updates)
• a (@trwnh@mastodon.social) notes that 7888 is more generic and doesn't specify object-vs-activity; notes there is also a missing link between an object and its Create activity.
• angus (@angusmcleod@mastodon.social) notes Discourse is essentially following 7888 but wants to know how to represent likes if implementors are predominately object-based
• a: use the likes collection, evan (@evan@cosocial.ca) +1'd
• Julian noted that the bottom-up approach (implementors) is mainly focused on backfill, and identifying other implementors.
• Julian also notes that 171b implementors have made some inroads to support backfill from 7888 implementors, both FEPs are cross-compatible and we should strive to have it remain so

Freeform brainstorming session

• Goal: identify and prioritise short-to-medium term goals for the ForumWG
• Medium: Jitsi whiteboard

SVG version

Unfortunately there was no note-taking during the whiteboarding session, but readers are encouraged to ask questions about items identified in the image above (or attached).

• End goal is to be able to point to a set of FEPs if someone new to AP wanted to implement threaded discussions
• Evan suggested that this would be a good report, but also recommended that a W3C explainer be created instead
• Context ownership was identified as a foundational element that is worth exploring/fep creation, as it is what multiple future discussion items would be based upon.

Agenda preparation for the February ForumWG meeting can be found at this public link (anyone can make comments for review.)

Monthly meetings are held on the first Thursday of each month, at 13h00 to 14h00 Eastern Time (currently 18h00 to 19h00 UTC). You can find them listed in the SocialCG Calendar. The next meeting will be held on 6 March 2025.

We will be discussing:

• Housekeeping
  • Daylight savings time Monday, ForumWG meetings track Eastern Time
  • EST ⇒ EDT (lose one hour)
• Update — State of Conversational Contexts (Julian)
  • https://community.nodebb.org/topic/18647/the-state-of-conversational-contexts-february-2025
  • IceShrimp.NET (waiting and watching)
    • Already exposes context collections, integration testing pending
  • Mitra
    • Implemented top-level context collections of objects, integration testing pending
• Brainstorm/whiteboarding: Use cases for resolvable contexts To decide focus of feps/implementors for the upcoming few months

As always — time permitting — if you'd like to speak or inquire about a certain topic, comment in the agenda or reply here, the floor is open!

Wanted to start a convo with @johnonolan@mastodon.xyz from Ghost and @angus@socialhub.activitypub.rocks from Discourse about AP resource discovery.

A common use case from fediverse users is to be linked out to a site, and attempt to "bring it in" to their local instance/app of choice. This is done by taking the browser URL and pasting it into their site/app's search bar, or equivalent.

For example:

• Ghost: https://activitypub.ghost.org/warp-factor-5-mr-sulu/
• Discourse: any forum topic

For context, last night I discovered that Ghost's latest blog post didn't make it into NodeBB, due to a bug on my end. I attempted to resolve it via URL but there was no AP resource at that URL. I ended up having to query the instance actor (which I happened to already know), and looking at the outbox.

To my knowledge there is no way to find a Discourse post or topic's AP resource ID without having a local Discourse account.

Would it be possible for you to send back an HTTP 301 Moved Permanently (or similar) if the Accepts header contains one of the AP-related types?

N.B. This probably has some overlap with @evan@cosocial.ca's HTTP Discovery Task Force, a 308 is recommended there.

Hey, remember Skype? I do. When I joined my first tech company (making silly little Facebook games back when that was a thing), they were coordinating over emails and in-person desk visits. First thing I did as an unpaid intern was move the dev team onto Skype.

We used it for so long we have some Skype emoji on this forum too :voodoo: :wave2: :mooning:

So long Skype, and thanks for all the fish.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/microsoft-is-shutting-down-skype-shifting-users-to-teams

We just released version 4.1.0 of NodeBB. Here are the latest features you can now take advantage of!

As an aside, for the first time in a long while, both @baris and I are working on the same codebase again. Up until version 4 was released, I'd been working on the activitypub branch and periodically merging in the latest changes from develop. It's nice to be home! :house_with_garden:

Improved federation of Group actors :left_speech_bubble:

We've improved the activity synchronization for followed group actors. Local updates/likes/etc. are now federated outward by the category in addition to those from remote users. Thanks to @rimu@piefed.social and @freamon who worked with me on debugging this one.

Mentions and Emoji now federating out in source.content :wave:

Emoji and mentions have been sent out to followers since v4, but that wasn't reflected in the raw markdown content that we also send along. That has been remediated now, and this change improves nodebb-to-nodebb federation.

Video object type now parseable :tv:

NodeBB is now able to ingest Peertube Video objects, and render then in a topic just like other pieces of content. Thanks @deadsuperhero@forum.wedistribute.org for prodding me to get this sorted out!

We received word recently that one of our long-standing clients, NFC Ring, is planning to shut down their forum toward the end of the month. While this is normally a sad time, it's worth mentioning that NFC Ring has been hosting their forum with NodeBB for over ten years! They've been with us just about as long as our self-serve hosting service has been, along with all of our ups and downs over the years.

Their forum contained a couple custom integrations, along with the earliest known NodeBB SSO plugin, and had a custom theme at one point as well.

These innovators envisioned the idea of paying for groceries with the tap of a ring years before that technology became ubiquitous. Super cool.

Nevertheless, their trust in us (a dinky little company in 2013) did not go unnoticed, and we wish them the best!

Hey @dansup@mastodon.social, can I poke you about getting NodeBB on FediDB?

It automatically picked up a couple NodeBB sites, so I think the nodeinfo stuff is working, just not sure if it required some manual intervention on your end to get the software link working — it currently 404s.

Cheers :flag-ca:

A conversational context is what the ForumWG uses to describe what you might see as a reply tree or comment thread. One of the short-to-medium term goals of the ForumWG is to get conversational backfill working reliably.

What this means — conversational backfill means that when you encounter a post/status/note/etc. (e.g. you're mentioned or boosted/shared something), there is a reliable and comprehensive way to retrieve the entire conversation around it, so you are not interacting with the object on its own, but in its proper context with all its sibling replies.

We plan to achieve this with a combination of a top-down (FEP-driven) and bottom-up (implementor-first) approach. While this sounds incongruent, top-down approaches tend to overcomplicate and bottom-up approaches tend to violate the protocol (unintentionally of course :joy:.)

There are a number of independent top-down efforts to achieve this:

• FEP-7888: Demystifying the context property
• FEP-171b: Conversation Containers
• FEP-76ea: Conversation Threads

These FEPs are in the R&D phase.

State of the Top-Down approach

At this time, the ForumWG is only recommending the following:

• Publishers SHOULD use context for grouping related objects in a thread (but this is not the only way to use context).

There is general agreement over:

• A context SHOULD resolve to a resource.

There are concerns over:

• What that resource is (as:OrderedCollection, a new type, something else?)
• What is included in that context (plain objects or activities)

State of the Bottom-Up approach

The bottom-up approach is results-oriented, and while certain implementors may follow certain FEPs, the overarching goal is "cross-compatible conversational backfill".

Separately, these implementors are (or have signalled interest in) implementing conversational backfill:

• FEP 7888
  • NodeBB (@julian) and Discourse (@angusmcleod@mastodon.social)
    • Attaches context to objects
    • context resolves to an OrderedCollection containing objects
    • Two-way conversation backfill is tested and working (7888 only).
  • WordPress (@pfefferle@mastodon.social) and Frequency (@jesseplusplus@mastodon.social)
    • Attaches context to objects
    • context resolves to an OrderedCollection containing objects
    • Outgoing conversational backfill is tested and working — others can backfill an entire conversation from these implementors.
  • Lemmy (@nutomic@lemmy.ml) and PieFed (@rimu@mastodon.nzoss.nz)
    • Have signalled interest (neither positive nor negative) in conversational backfill and are waiting and watching at this time.
• FEP 171b
  • Mitra (@silverpill@mitra.social)
    • Attaches context to activities
    • context resolves to an OrderedCollection containing activities
    • Incoming conversational backfill is tested and working — Mitra can backfill an entire conversation from FEP 7888 and 171b implementors (:tada: nice!)
  • Hubzilla (@scott@authorship.studio) and Streams (@mikedev@fediversity.site)
    • Attaches context to activities
    • context resolves to an OrderedCollection containing activities
    • Outgoing conversational backfill is tested and working (against Mitra)

What's Next

This thread will likely contain updates and discussion from related parties about their implementations and what they wish to do next. In the cruelest irony of ironies, because conversational backfill is not ubiquitous yet, you will need to "View Original URL" in order to see all of the replies.

The ForumWG will meet again on 6 March 13h00 EST where all of this will be discussed, as well as planning out the future focus items for the ForumWG.

If you are an implementor, there is no reason you cannot join the fray. Boost this post, reply to it, join the conversation(al context)!!

If you're not an implementor, boost me anyway :stuck_out_tongue: