The state of conversational contexts (February 2025)

[angus@socialhub.activitypub.rocks]

Thanks for putting this together @julian. I'll be coming to the next Forum WG meeting on March 6 to discuss next steps

[panos@community.nodebb.org]

IIRC @kopper@brain.d.on-t.work implemented backfill on Iceshrimp.net, maybe they wanna share their approach.

[kopper@brain.d.on-t.work]

@panos there's nothing i could really add that's anything novel.

we simply recurse through replies collections with plans to load context collections whenever they get more adoption (and whenever i get the motivation to write the code). we already expose context collections of our own

[julian@community.nodebb.org]

> we already expose context collections of our own

@kopper@brain.d.on-t.work you do? Kick ass. Let me run some tests and see how it performs!

> with plans to load context collections whenever they get more adoption

️

Can I put you down under the "wait and see" category?

[kopper@brain.d.on-t.work]

@julian

Can I put you down under the "wait and see" category?

sure!

[silverpill@mitra.social]

@julian I implemented collection of posts in mitra. For now it is only attached to top-level posts (via context).

Here, for example: https://mitra.social/objects/019529ff-7a45-9752-16f2-a3e780746c1c

[eeeee@community.nodebb.org]

Very complicated all this Fediverse stuff! Far from the dream of having one account for everything, I seemed to need an account on every service to get the whole picture. I have now Nodebb, Mastodon, Lemmy, PixelFed and Peertube!
I dont know if Im just not using it properly, or if seeing everything from any one of these site is even possible?
@julian how far off is the prospect of using my nodebb account for all Federated chat, is that even achievable in long term?

[kichae@community.nodebb.org]

@eeeee
From this website, you can follow almost any user account you want on almost any Mastodon-, Lemmy-, mbin-, PixelFed-, Misskey- (and its forks), Hometown-, Friendica-, Hubzilla-, or Mitra-based website, barring a few minor obstacles (neither side needs to have blocked the other, neither side needs to have disabled federation, and the user you're following needs to have not blocked you). You can also follow groups like Lemmy communities, or Guppe groups.

There's really no need to have accounts on all platforms. Not unless you want to have separation between what you post, or want the variation in UX that comes with all of these different pieces of software focusing on different core experiences.

What's important to know is that they work via syndication -- content is mirrored across the network, not viewed insitu -- and that syndication doesn't occur without prompting. So, you need to go through the steps of entering a remote user or group's url or full account address (username@host.tld) in order to fetch content, and that content, by and large, is not backfilled.

If you can accept these limitations, then a single Mastodon, mbin, nodeBB, etc. account is all you need.

[julian@community.nodebb.org]

@Kichae @eeeee that is my approach as well. I was tired of having to maintain so many accounts for "social media", and so when I was finally able to make NodeBB my primary gateway to social media that was a big step for me.

It doesn't hurt that I get way more engagement on the open social web

[kichae@community.nodebb.org]

@julian "We're making a super cool product that's adopting this space" tends to go over well in the Fediverse, yeah. We love being catered to with cool toys and tools!

And good God do I miss real forums, after a decade on Reddit.

[eeeee@community.nodebb.org]

Ok, if I can give specific example. I found a community via lemmy which is interesting.
@medicine@mander.xyz
If I want to post a topic in it, can I make a nodebb post and send it there?

[julian@community.nodebb.org]

@eeeee I'm not actually sure about it, but I think all you have to do is mention the community.

In fact, you did in your reply, and I don't actually know what would happen normally. Perhaps it has to be a root post.

[eeeee@community.nodebb.org]

Ok I tried this as as a root post

It didnt get there.
Whereas I can post into that community with my similar named lemm.ee account

[eeeee@community.nodebb.org]

.. in medicine@mander.xyz group nothing arrived
There is a post I made earlier (using isurg@lemm.ee) but not this latest one from isurg@nodebb

[julian@community.nodebb.org]

@eeeee Thanks, can you open an issue about this? I'll have to see what Lemmy expects for a new submission.

[freamon@community.nodebb.org]

@julian I tested out a root post that mentioned a PieFed community, and it got there okay - it's viewable at https://pythag.net/c/sci_fi (and federated out okay to another PieFed instance at https://palaver.p3x.de/c/sci_fi@pythag.net)

My guess as to why Lemmy might not like it is that the activity contains:

"audience": "https://community.nodebb.org/category/-1"

It looks like Lemmy tries to fetch that and can't parse the response.

[julian@community.nodebb.org]

@freamon oh! You're right on the money.

For whatever reason, Lemmy always checks audience even though it doesn't need to.

I brought this up for discussion in their github, and it resulted in @nutomic@lemmy.ml removing parsing of audience altogether!

So this might actually be a moot point once more Lemmy instances update, but I am not 100% sure.

[julian@community.nodebb.org]

@silverpill@mitra.social this is now tested and outgoing backfill is working with NodeBB.

Are there plans to introduce post collections to all levels via context?

While there is utility in exposing it for the root-level, if I am Announce'd one of the replies (e.g. this one), there is no explicit link to the top-level post in order to discover context.

[silverpill@mitra.social]

@julian Sure, I will add context to replies. Maybe in the next release

@angus @mario @jupiter_rowland @kopper

[julian@community.nodebb.org]

@mario@hub.somaton.com when you say "internally backfills", I'm assuming you mean between Hubzilla instances?

Is this done via context containing activities, or objects?