Introducing ActivityPub.Space
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The in-person events at FediCon in Vancouver lit a fire in the Canadian ActivityPub community. One of the louder calls were for a place in the fediverse for ActivityPub discussions; a place for groups to form and for long-running discussions to be had.
I was more than happy to get involved. I also wanted such a place, and I've discussed it on and off for the past year. ActivityPub development discussions are fragmented across multiple disconnected channels, and none of them fully capture the entirety (or a majority, or even a sizeable minority) of the AP developer community. ActivityPub.Space is my answer to that call.
One constant about ActivityPub is that all ActivityPub developers are on the fediverse, and so it only makes sense that discussions about AP development should also take place on the fediverse.
At the same time, the "fediverse" isn't one singular entity. jaz@mastodon.iftas.org famously quipped "There is One Fediverse. There are a Million Fediverses." While I can't make guarantees about this site connecting with a million fediverses, I can say that it does connect with the microblogiverse, the blogiverse (WordPress blogs!), and the Threadiverse (Lemmy/Piefed/MBin/NodeBB/Discourse).
So how does it work?
The site is divided up into several categories:
- General Discussion is for any non-technical discussions about ActivityPub
- Technical Discussion is for technical deep-dives
- Meta contains discussions about this site itself
- Random is for everything else (there's always a "Random" category on a forum, isn't there...?)
We also pull in content direct from Fediverse news outlets such as "Week in Fediverse", "Connected Places", and "Relay, by We Distribute".
On the threadiverse side, we directly link to several other fediverse-focused communities on Lemmy and Piefed.
We utilise a number of relays to both distribute local content out and receive content from the wider microblogiverse. When content comes in via microblogs, they're not usually categorized, so we check for relevant hashtags and automatically categorize them into one of the local categories.
The wonderful thing about this site is that it fully federates, which means you can follow all of these categories from your app of choice. You don't even have to register a local account if you don't want to, but you definitely can (and should!) if you want the best experience browsing the categorized topics.
The categories today are rather broad, but over time I hope to split them up into smaller topics based on user demand. Give the site a try today!
Congrats on the launch, very cool!
Out of curiosity, did you post this here directly or is this federated in from https://activitypub.space/topic/12/introducing-activitypub.space ? Because I’m seeing a bunch of replies there that aren’t here.
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@julian test message please ignore.
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@jaz Well, from what I gather, looks like you really don't, I'm writing this from my pretty much only account which is Mastodon.
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@jaz There's an actor to each secion:
@general
@technical-discussion
@random
@metaLooks like if you subscribe to one, you get all posts in that category.
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I'm following all of them using Mastodon 4.4.3, but not getting posts as yet. Only posts in reply to the one that tagged me.
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@jaz Hmm... Let's see what the actor shows in json.
Hmmm... The outbox seems to return empty. That's some bullshit.
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PF / Lemmy joiners, use these identifiers to find the groups:
!general@activitypub.space
!technical-discussion@activitypub.space -
PF / Lemmy joiners, use these identifiers to find the groups:
!general@activitypub.space
!technical-discussion@activitypub.space -
drq@mastodon.ml how's it bullshit? I simply haven't gotten around to implementing the outbox yet.
It doesn't break federation to have an empty outbox.
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Here's instructions I wrote up for another NodeBB site with how to follow stuff from Mastodon - https://discussions.thenexus.today/topic/48/how-to-follow-and-participate-in-discussions-here-from-your-fediverse-and-atmosphere-accounts/2
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@julian Sorry, never meant any offense.
I was going to write it off as "typical Mastodon fuckery" and tag Gargron if that wasn't the case if that's any consolation
But yeah, I think, it's kinda needed for backfill, i.e. so that a far instance user doesn't see empty when they import the actor.
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@julian Sorry, never meant any offense.
I was going to write it off as "typical Mastodon fuckery" and tag Gargron if that wasn't the case if that's any consolation
But yeah, I think, it's kinda needed for backfill, i.e. so that a far instance user doesn't see empty when they import the actor.
drq@mastodon.ml right. That's a part of Mastodon behaviour I haven't looked into yet.
Populating the outbox is certainly on the to-do list. There was no malice meant in its omission.
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@julian Sorry, never meant any offense.
I was going to write it off as "typical Mastodon fuckery" and tag Gargron if that wasn't the case if that's any consolation
But yeah, I think, it's kinda needed for backfill, i.e. so that a far instance user doesn't see empty when they import the actor.
@drq @julian I'd be really appreciative if this new discussion space didn't quickly degenerate into expletives and negative comments about open source projects and the people working on them. Nothing and no-one is perfect, but the creators of ActivityPub platforms are generally open to criticism and useful feedback in regular channels, but all of us in this ecosystem could use a little more positivity, even if specific platforms, features or functions don't meet our immediate needs.
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Congrats on the launch, very cool!
Out of curiosity, did you post this here directly or is this federated in from https://activitypub.space/topic/12/introducing-activitypub.space ? Because I’m seeing a bunch of replies there that aren’t here.
jdp23@neuromatch.social I posted it directly in a.s
It looks like SocialHub is mirroring a number of a.s categories.
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@julian ah, that explains it.
btw i am weighing into the discussions on SocialHub's direction, suggesting that they keep their more political focus (including opposition to Meta). I saw your point about hoping that dev discussions on activitypub.space could be apolitical ... I don't think that's actually achievable, but given who's active there (including Evan) and the whole nexus of people who were at FediCon, the politics are likely to be a lot lower-key with more of an "open social web" (Big Tech-friendly) focus.
Both are needed, so if they do go that route that'll be a good complement. And, with activitypub.space based in Canada and SOcialHub in Europe, that's also very complementary -- and a big plus that they're both outside the US. Then again SocialHub might not have enough critical mass to be a factor, time will tell.
And seeing how mediocre the Discourse connection to the rest of fedi is certainly undleines that I might the right call basing discussions.thenexus.today on NodeBB!
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@julian ah, that explains it.
btw in the discussion about directions for SocialHub, I've suggesting that they keep their more political focus (including opposition to Meta). I saw your point about hoping that dev discussions on activitypub.space could be apolitical ... I don't think that's actually achievable, but given who's been active there and the whole nexus of people who were at FediCon, the politics are likely to be a lot lower-key with more of an "open social web" (Big Tech-friendly) focus.
Both are needed, so if they do go that route that'll be a good complement. And, with activitypub.space based in Canada and SOcialHub in Europe, that's also very complementary -- and a big plus that they're both outside the US.
