About half of the Fediverse addresses typed by FediForum attendees into the session notes are missing the leading "@".
People typed in their very own Fediverse handles. And because they came to FediForum, it's very likely they are very well acquainted with the right syntax.
Pretty strong circumstantial evidence that most people won't be able to distinguish Fediverse handles from e-mail addresses.
I have long believed that they should be the same.
@muzzle@reiver I never quite got to the point of understanding ! And @ and % in long addresses and then we got dns and better connected ip networks and i didn’t need to any more.
@muzzle
> I've always thought that we should have gone with a symbol other than @ for the user-host separator
#Matrix uses a @handle:domain.foo address format. It would be great if people could bring their own domain to any instance, and use the same address for email, matrix, or #fediverse.
@strypey@J12t@muzzle@reiver The @ symbol in email addresses is perfect for its usage, since it actually reads: someone (at) some place, which is exactly what is intended, as in:
stevejobs@apple.com
billgates@microsoft.com
What makes no sense whatsoever is this current trend seen on too many services nowadays, where a user handle already starts with @, making it redundant and deprived of any meaning.
@diogoeichert
> a user handle already starts with @, making it redundant and deprived of any meaning
This kind of makes sense on centralised services where you're directing a message (at) someone. The current fediverse and matrix address formats mash that together with the...
@diogoeichert
> a user handle already starts with @, making it redundant and deprived of any meaning
This kind of makes sense on centralised services where you're directing a message (at) someone. The current fediverse and matrix address formats take that, and mash it together with the...
> (at) somewhere
... of email addresses. It's not ideal. But changing either at this point would require not only protocol change, but some major retraining of everyone using them.
@diogoeichert
> a user handle already starts with @, making it redundant and deprived of any meaning
This kind of makes sense on centralised services where you're directing a message (at) someone. The current fediverse and matrix address formats take that, and mash it together with the...
@diogoeichert
It's not ideal. But changing either at this point would require not only protocol change, but some major retraining of everyone using them.
@diogoeichert
> Just like pretty much any kind of change that’s worth doing
Why do you think that?
There's a lot of worthwhile features that have been added in apps without even needing server changes, let alone protocol changes. Yes, people need a bit of retraining to use those features, but they can also just keep using their apps as before. Unlike a change in account addressing, which would require everyone to change their use patterns.
Regarding:
"What makes no sense whatsoever is this current trend seen on too many services nowadays, where a user handle already starts with @, making it redundant and deprived of any meaning."
The Fediverse copied Twitter
Early Twitter users brought it over from blogs and web-based forums — and later Twitter made it functional — although differently from how it worked on blogs & web-based forums, where it linked to the original post rather than the user.
@J12t It's definitely ideal but it's also pretty hard when a given person's email address is going to be @gmail.com 8 times out of 10.
Fedi servers are more spread out than email servers, and are already run by people thin on resources. Tying email to Fedi would make it even more costly to run and price people out. Tying Fedi to email is impossible because again, Gmail isn't going to do it. Outlook wouldn't either. Most people use one of those two to host their email.
You have to get people to either switch away from Gmail (god save your soul) or get Gmail to conform to something else. It's simply not possible.
I think this is another advantage Bluesky has for the use of domain names as a user ID; it continues to serve the identifier's best known, most familiar purpose (pointing to a website).
@J12t I dunno. I think it's more common to change AP servers than to change email addresses. You wouldn't want to have to change your email address because of a moderation problem due to someone else on your server.
@jamesmarshall well, you are talking about the social case of when to use one identifier vs another, and I am talking about the technical case why one identifier can support multiple communications protocols. These are separate subjects in my view.
Example: many people use different email addresses for different purposes, all the way to now-automated one-time addresses provided by companies such asApple.
I hate the double @ convention that mastodon pushes. It’s not part of activitypub and not essential to the fediverse. That said it was useful when I added mastodon username lookup. The ones that look like e-mail are nostr and the ones that look funny with a double @ are mastodon.
That said. I think fediverse servers SHOULD support email at their user addresses.
@76c71aae3a491f1d9eec47cba17e22@mostr.pub I think the idea was to do a straight port of Twitter @mention to something that also has a domain component.
I don’t know the history, but maybe mastodon implemented. @mention for local users before they started to federate?
But all in all, people are generally very confused how to get from an identifier to some metadata.
@sergiodomeyko@nvraemdonck today: extremely unlikely. But does it have to be that way? It would require email hosts and social media instances to stick their heads and perhaps operations together.
@sergiodomeyko@J12t but isn't the protocol automatically decided by your email provider? Maybe you could manually change the protocol before sending the mail but you would need to know it's an AT protocol
@nvraemdonck@sergiodomeyko the protocol is decided by the software into which you type the handle. Email clients today only understand email (and so, for example, stupidly interpret fediverse addresses as email addresses in emails). Mastodon et al only understand fediverse handles. Both product categories should learn a few more things is my view.
@J12t@sergiodomeyko sorry yes I meant the client. I can imagine it would slow down the process to have to decide which protocol to use to get the email to the right receiver, but with some integration would be almost imperceptible to users. I'm no techie but I see where you're going with imagining a bold future for the fedi.
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