Hey @julian@community.nodebb.org I'm currently experimenting with a NodeBB setup that has ActivityPub enabled.
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Hey @julian@community.nodebb.org I'm currently experimenting with a NodeBB setup that has ActivityPub enabled. I saw that documentation was a little bit sparse, and just wanted to expand my understanding.
I've seen NodeBB interact with different parts of the Fediverse. In my setup, I see that categories can follow existing Actors, such as profiles, blogs, and Lemmy Groups. Are categories themselves capable of being Actors in NodeBB?
We're kind of interested in maybe setting up a user community on We Distribute's infra, and integrating into the Threadiverse with Lemmy, Piefed, Mbin, and everyone else. I'm just trying to understand capabilities and limitations.
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Hey @julian@community.nodebb.org I'm currently experimenting with a NodeBB setup that has ActivityPub enabled. I saw that documentation was a little bit sparse, and just wanted to expand my understanding.
I've seen NodeBB interact with different parts of the Fediverse. In my setup, I see that categories can follow existing Actors, such as profiles, blogs, and Lemmy Groups. Are categories themselves capable of being Actors in NodeBB?
We're kind of interested in maybe setting up a user community on We Distribute's infra, and integrating into the Threadiverse with Lemmy, Piefed, Mbin, and everyone else. I'm just trying to understand capabilities and limitations.
@julian@community.nodebb.org Oh wow, I just saw that it automatically appeared on Lemmy after a few minutes. 🤯
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@julian@community.nodebb.org Oh wow, I just saw that it automatically appeared on Lemmy after a few minutes. 🤯
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org sorry for the delay! I'm vacationing in Mexico with the fam post-FOSDEM (not entirely my plan to make them back to back, but that's how things fell into place!)
Will respond separately to your original post.
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Hey @julian@community.nodebb.org I'm currently experimenting with a NodeBB setup that has ActivityPub enabled. I saw that documentation was a little bit sparse, and just wanted to expand my understanding.
I've seen NodeBB interact with different parts of the Fediverse. In my setup, I see that categories can follow existing Actors, such as profiles, blogs, and Lemmy Groups. Are categories themselves capable of being Actors in NodeBB?
We're kind of interested in maybe setting up a user community on We Distribute's infra, and integrating into the Threadiverse with Lemmy, Piefed, Mbin, and everyone else. I'm just trying to understand capabilities and limitations.
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org said in Hey @julian@community.nodebb.org I'm currently experimenting with a NodeBB setup that has ActivityPub enabled.:
> I saw that documentation was a little bit sparse, and just wanted to expand my understanding.Can you tell me more about which sections need fleshing out? Writing documentation is hard for technical folk like me, but if you let me know what exactly needs more detail, I will be happy to write something up. Also paging @panos, who might be able to do the heavy lifting on that one!!
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@julian@community.nodebb.org Hey, no problem! I think the biggest stumbling block was understanding how federation works. For example, if my forum has ActivityPub enabled, and I create a category, do I have to do anything to fetch it from another platform?
The answer is that federation works automatically, and the category shortname is what's used for a federation lookup. So "announcements" becomes @announcements@forum.wedistribute.org.
It's mostly little things like that, spelling out the standard behavior and explaining outcomes. I'd be happy to contribute documentation as I continue to use NodeBB!
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@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org said in Hey @julian@community.nodebb.org I'm currently experimenting with a NodeBB setup that has ActivityPub enabled.:
> I saw that documentation was a little bit sparse, and just wanted to expand my understanding.Can you tell me more about which sections need fleshing out? Writing documentation is hard for technical folk like me, but if you let me know what exactly needs more detail, I will be happy to write something up. Also paging @panos, who might be able to do the heavy lifting on that one!!
I didn't want to go as far as allowing categories to follow individual actors, because categories are for topical discussion and individual users tend to be less focused on a single topic.
So categories can follow other
Groupactors only. That is by design.However, a category is an actor, and anybody can follow it. They just need to know the handle, which is set in the admin panel and by default is usually the same as the "slug", which is the human readable bit in the url. e.g. "General Discussion"'s slug is
general-discussion. I do have to expose this to the frontend, though. It is not immediately apparent this is so.Share your thoughts in this GitHub issue opened by @panos@catodon.social https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/issues/13126
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@julian@community.nodebb.org Yep, that makes sense. I believe that both our WordPress site and PeerTube channels are technically Group Actors, though I will have to revisit that.
I just think it would be interesting to use ActivityPub to automatically submit posts to our various categories, such as our podcast automatically posting to a Podcast category, or our news articles about the Fediverse to appear as forum submissions under the Fediverse category.
The effect of this would be that Actors could automatically have content announced to various groups in a native way, so Lemmy or PieFed or MBin users subscribed to @fediverse@forum.wedistribute.org would see that content as submissions that could be upvoted or interacted with.
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@julian@community.nodebb.org Yep, that makes sense. I believe that both our WordPress site and PeerTube channels are technically Group Actors, though I will have to revisit that.
I just think it would be interesting to use ActivityPub to automatically submit posts to our various categories, such as our podcast automatically posting to a Podcast category, or our news articles about the Fediverse to appear as forum submissions under the Fediverse category.
The effect of this would be that Actors could automatically have content announced to various groups in a native way, so Lemmy or PieFed or MBin users subscribed to @fediverse@forum.wedistribute.org would see that content as submissions that could be upvoted or interacted with.
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org Any user (of any type) can submit posts to a category. They need only mention the category.
e.g. Mention @testing-ground here, and when received by NodeBB, it should automatically be slotted in that category.
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@julian I just ran into this. I guessed that the 'shortname' for https://forum.wedistribute.org/category/6/the-decentered-podcast would be 'the-decentered-podcast' but trying to fetch !the-decentered-podcast@forum.wedistribute.org didn't work, because it's actually just 'decentered'. I don't think that there's a way for anybody just looking at HTML representation to know this.
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Hey @julian@community.nodebb.org I'm currently experimenting with a NodeBB setup that has ActivityPub enabled. I saw that documentation was a little bit sparse, and just wanted to expand my understanding.
I've seen NodeBB interact with different parts of the Fediverse. In my setup, I see that categories can follow existing Actors, such as profiles, blogs, and Lemmy Groups. Are categories themselves capable of being Actors in NodeBB?
We're kind of interested in maybe setting up a user community on We Distribute's infra, and integrating into the Threadiverse with Lemmy, Piefed, Mbin, and everyone else. I'm just trying to understand capabilities and limitations.
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org
I just looked at your wedistribute.org website, and it looks great
What software / system are you using for that main page?Edit, answering my own question, having done Inspect, it seems your site is on wordpress. Looks very smart
and Ive realised the nodebb is at forum.wedistribute.org -
@julian I just ran into this. I guessed that the 'shortname' for https://forum.wedistribute.org/category/6/the-decentered-podcast would be 'the-decentered-podcast' but trying to fetch !the-decentered-podcast@forum.wedistribute.org didn't work, because it's actually just 'decentered'. I don't think that there's a way for anybody just looking at HTML representation to know this.
@freamon open to suggestions on how to expose this to the end user.
If accessing the content from fedi the handle is irrelevant, since it's part of the AP actor payload.
I'll admit I didn't really consider the use case of someone accessing the forum directly and looking for the handle to follow.
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@freamon open to suggestions on how to expose this to the end user.
If accessing the content from fedi the handle is irrelevant, since it's part of the AP actor payload.
I'll admit I didn't really consider the use case of someone accessing the forum directly and looking for the handle to follow.
@julian For a lot of people, the standard flow is to copy someone's handle, go back to their home base on Mastodon or Hubzilla or whatever, and follow or connect with them. Making the handle visible on the NodeBB UI would help people who use that flow. -
@freamon open to suggestions on how to expose this to the end user.
If accessing the content from fedi the handle is irrelevant, since it's part of the AP actor payload.
I'll admit I didn't really consider the use case of someone accessing the forum directly and looking for the handle to follow.
@julian I like how PeerTube does it. Looking at https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos, for example, there's 2 intersecting squares next to the channel name, and clicking that puts the handle into my clipboard, for pasting into the box that I can then use on my instance to fetch it.
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@julian I like how PeerTube does it. Looking at https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos, for example, there's 2 intersecting squares next to the channel name, and clicking that puts the handle into my clipboard, for pasting into the box that I can then use on my instance to fetch it.
@freamon You also have the Hubzilla example, which shows the entire handle below the user's display name.
For example, mine shows up as:
Scott M. Stolz
scott@loves.tech
On NodeBB, the name could be made clickable and go to the person's profile. -
@freamon open to suggestions on how to expose this to the end user.
If accessing the content from fedi the handle is irrelevant, since it's part of the AP actor payload.
I'll admit I didn't really consider the use case of someone accessing the forum directly and looking for the handle to follow.
@julian Another thing to consider is that showing handles is a good way to prevent spoofing or identity confusion. That way you can tell the difference between julian@community,nodebb.org and julian@example.com. The fact that the domain is different alerts the user that this is not the same Julian. -
@julian Another thing to consider is that showing handles is a good way to prevent spoofing or identity confusion. That way you can tell the difference between julian@community,nodebb.org and julian@example.com. The fact that the domain is different alerts the user that this is not the same Julian.This is not the same Julian. This is Julian from Hubzilla Monster. I want cookies. Nom Nom Nom.
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@julian I like how PeerTube does it. Looking at https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos, for example, there's 2 intersecting squares next to the channel name, and clicking that puts the handle into my clipboard, for pasting into the box that I can then use on my instance to fetch it.
@freamon ah, I see. Yes we could experiment with putting the handle underneath the category name.
@scott@loves.tech, we're talking about categories here, not users.
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@freamon ah, I see. Yes we could experiment with putting the handle underneath the category name.
@scott@loves.tech, we're talking about categories here, not users.
@julian I know, but I was too lazy to start a new topic. :winking_face_with_tongue: -
@julian I know, but I was too lazy to start a new topic. :winking_face_with_tongue:Speaking of which, I keep forgetting how to create a new topic. Are the handles for that exposed anywhere on NodeBB?
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Speaking of which, I keep forgetting how to create a new topic. Are the handles for that exposed anywhere on NodeBB?
@scott@loves.tech same shortcoming as finding the category for following, the handle isn't exposed.
Also not all categories federate so whatever solution we adopt has to also communicate if a category is local only to the instance.
