It may be that we disagree, but my position is that the “end user” and the “end user experience” is not in any way required to conform to Mastodon’s expectations.

I broadly agree. However, one thing you said here struck me in particular.

At the level we’re working with here, there is no such thing as a “post” or a “status”, there is only an Object with a Link tag, and that Link may or may not have proof of consent attached.

Is this an attempt to invent a DRM equivalent for the Fediverse?

Even considering that question feels like a derail, so that might best be discussed elsewhere.

Yes, but I'm not sure that's relevant. The comment I was responding to (and support) says:

The biggest problem I see is that current wording make it sound like any server not understanding the FEP is automatically malicious. But if it’s optional, it’s not malicious to not have it.

My point is that a user directing their user agent, connected to a server that supports this FEP, to create a post that links to another post instead of quoting it (assuming the user agent/server API makes the distinction) is also not in and of itself malicious activity.

You write:

But these kinds of transformations are out-of-scope here. As far as the protocol level is concerned, content is an opaque string that may be parsed as HTML by default.

But in your next post you suggest:

C collapses the post under a clickthrough warning, [...] You might also consider parsing the Link tag and stripping the placeholder but refusing to render the embedded preview

To me those appear to be examples of transformations you earlier believed to be out of scope.

Also, I find it hard to agree that concerns that -- may be -- Mastodon specific are out of scope for this discussion, when the preamble for the pre-FEP starts

Quote Posts are an often-requested feature for Mastodon

and goes on to say

This is a work-in-progress document describing Mastodon’s proposed way of representing quote posts

And as I said upthread, "some of my questions below are driven by user experience considerations. It’s my experience that failing to consider the desired end user experience early enough in the process can result in specs that are not suitable".

I don't believe this is a derail.

Your original comment says:

The biggest problem I see is that current wording make it sound like any server not understanding the FEP is automatically malicious. But if it’s optional, it’s not malicious to not have it.

I am agreeing with that point, and taking it a step further.

A server may implement the FEP, but a client of that server may not support creating quote posts.

So to your quoted comment above I would add the following: "It's also not malicious for a server to support it, but not use it for outgoing posts.".

In other words, if you observe a post from a server that you know supports the FEP, and the post links to someone else's post instead of quoting it, you cannot infer anything about whether or not the server is malicious.

What's the UX expectation for inserting a quote of something from a different Fediverse network?

If I'm on Mastodon and want to quote another Mastodon post it's (comparatively) straightforward. A new UI control on each post that quotes it instead of replying.

Now suppose I have a Mastodon account and a Lemmy account, both of which are open on a browser on the same device in two different tabs.

I want to quote a Lemmy post in a new Mastodon post.

How does that work?

Is there a new "Compose with quote" button that prompts for the URL of the Lemmy post?

Can I just compose as normal, and paste the Lemmy URL into the compose box, and the server will figure it out? Or is the client supposed to figure it out?

If there is a "Compose with quote" button, what happens if I paste a URL to an item on a server that doesn't support quoting? Does it fallback to inserting a URL?

How should a user reallow quotes?

User A sends a post with their default policy allowing anyone to quote it.

It starts going viral, so they decide to temporarily revoke the quotes and restrict who can quote it.

After a week things have died down. They can change their quote policy to allow new quotes. How do they inform the network that the previous quotes are now valid?

Does a quote post start a new top level thread?

Or are quote posts to be treated as if they were direct replies to the post they are quoting?

A sends post 1, marked public.

B sends post 2, quotes post 1. B does not follow A.

C follows A and B.

A changes quote controls on post 1 to be followers only.

C views post 2. What do they see?

Is it:

a: the text from post 2, but it's missing the quote of post 1 because B no longer has permission to quote it?

b: the text from post 2, and the quote of post 1, because C has permission to view both posts?

In the spec-as-written I think the answer is a. And that's a very weird user experience.

This suggests that quote permissions should not be separate from view permissions. If you can view a post you should be able to quote it. If those view permissions later change other people who can view the quoted post should still be able to see it.

I write post A. It is quoted in post B.

Post B is then boosted, favourited, or some other reaction is performed.

Do the stats for those actions on post B also accrue to post A? I.e, the author of post A can see "M likes on post, N likes on post 1 that quotes this post, O likes on post 2 that quotes this post" and so on?

I note that early in your document you mention that some of these features will "not necessarily translate directly to User Experience considerations".

You'll note that some of my questions below are driven by user experience considerations. It's my experience that failing to consider the desired end user experience early enough in the process can result in specs that are not suitable.

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In the "Representation of a quote post" section the content looks like this:

 "content": "I am quoting alice's postRE: https://example.com/users/alice/statuses/1",

What's the RE: ... text doing there? If the user entered it, doesn't this undermine the point of quoting the post?

Or are you suggesting the server has appended this to end of the content the user entered?

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What is the default quote policy (acceptQuotesFrom) if it is not provided?

Since this may depend on the post's visibility settings and mentions a "default quote policy" may not be possible, and the correct question might be "What is the algorithem for determining the acceptQuotesFrom value if the property is not present?".

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acceptsQuotesFrom appears to be a single property. Shouldn't it be a list, to allow the author to choose a small number of people who may quote them?

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People mentioned in the post can always quote it.

1. User A sends post 1 mentioning user B.
2. User B quotes the post in post 2.
3. User A edits post 1 and removes the mention of user B, and sets acceptsQuotesFrom to disallow quoting.

What happens to post 2 by user B at step 2? At the time it was posted they were authorised to quote it, and there exists, in the edit history, a version of post 1 that does mention them.

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How many posts can be listed as "quote posts" on a given top-level post?

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In the user agent, are quoted posts expected to be treated like attachments (which do not count against the character limit), or URLs, or something else?

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If an account is deleted, what happens to posts that quote posts from that account? Is the permission-to-quote revoked?

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Consider a post B that quotes another post A.

The user that posted A revokes the quote permission.

Is the quote Link entirely removed from post B, as if it was never there? Or is some sort of tombstone Link written, so that user agents can provide the context that there used to be something there?

This context ("this post quoted a post that is no longer quotable") might be necessary to make post B make sense.

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Sending a post-with-a-quote and getting approval for the quote can be asynchronous. So someone's timeline of posts may contain a post with an unapproved quote. What is the intended user experience here?

• Show the post, with the quote
• Hide the post
• Show the post, with the quote, but indicate the quote is unapproved?

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Where are user agents supposed to render the quote? Above the text of the post, or below?

Alternatively, why not provide a mechanism in the Note object for the post author to indicate where they would like (on a per-quote basis) the quote to be rendered.

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Can I create cycles in the quote graph? For example:

1. I create Note A. I then update A to quote itself.
2. I create Note A and B. B quotes A. Then I update A to quote B.
3. Notes A, B, and C are created. B quotes A, C quotes B. Then A is edited to quote C.

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Authors of posts are notified if their post is quoted.

What provision is there to notify authors of the post doing the quoting, if the post they are quoting is modified?

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Do quotes of quotes generate notifications?

• User A sends post 1
• User B sends post 2, quoting post 1
• User C sends post 3, quoting post 2

Does user A get a notification about post 3 because it indirectly quotes their post 1?

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What properties, if any, should be inherited by the post doing the quoting? For example, if I quote a post marked "sensitive", is my post also marked sensitive?

If not, what is the intended user-agent behaviour for displaying a non-sensitive post quoting a sensitive post?

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Same question, but for content warnings (summary).

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I write post A. It is quoted in post B.

Post B is then boosted, favourited, or some other reaction is performed. As the author of post A, does that generate a notification to me?

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I may want to quote a very long post, but only refer to part of it (maybe a sentence or two). There is no mechanism here that would allow me to do that. Think of it like setting the focus on an image attachment; you still get the whole attachment, but I control what shows up in the preview.

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1. User A sends post 1, marks it as followers-only (for both visibility and quoting).

2. User B follows user A, and sends post 2, quoting post 1. They mark post 2 as public.

3. User C follows user B, but does not follow user A, so they cannot see post 1 from user A.

4. Post 2 appears in user C's timeline. What do they see?

Alternatively, at step 2, is user B allowed to send a public post that quotes a post with a narrower quoting visibility? Are they prevented from sending the post entirely? Or is the visibility of their post 2 restricted to just the followers of user A? If so, how is restriction communicated to user B?