What I find strange in #ActivityPub and #Fediverse that there is no way to put a note to follow request. Like "I want more posts in language_name in my feed and I liked the cat videos you repost".
It gives cases when someone concerned that they did not understood why someone follows them.
@J12t Yes, that's certainly one use-case for the outbox... to "catch up" on things you missed, on a per-user basis.
But as far as I am concerned they're separate APIs that pull from a common data source.
For example, reading the ActivityPub spec, one could draw the conclusion that the outbox is an ordered list of activities, likely read as-is from the database.. but that's not strictly defined, so it's possible to dynamically create outbox items on-demand based on user history stored elsewhere.
That would mean less duplication of content (and the syncing that is required), fewer bugs, etc... but the cost is the collection then has to be dynamically constructed.
@julian It's mostly append-only, easy to cache ...
For FediTest, we have come to the conclusion that simple pass/fail isn't going to cut it. We need a more gradual rating, and the current state is 1) fail -- against the spec and likely go cause interop problems 2) soft fail -- against the spec but probably harmless from an interop perspective 3) degrade -- e.g. everything turns into a Note and 4) pass. Not sure this is an exhaustive list ... your empty outbox would get a pass, I think.
More Excellent developments on the good work being performed on #NodeBB and interoperability with #WordPress instances endowed with the #ActivityPub plugin:
@molly0xfff is a leading cryptocurrency critic, but get to know her and you’ll see she’s anything but cynical about the future of the web. Hear why this researcher, writer and software engineer thinks so in this fascinating conversation with @mike:
Part of my frustration with #ActivityPub and one of the things I find baffling giving everything else in it: the lack of tools for backpressure.
Backpressure is fundamental in building reliable distributed systems (c.f., Notes on Distributed Systems for Young Bloods). From a C2S perspective I get why it wouldn't need to be specified, but from a S2S federated protocol perspective its absence is frustrating.
All that it says is to take care not to overwhelm others and a bit on rate limits
But I also want state convergence. No matter what, different hosts are going to wind up with different views of the state of the graph. Why are there no mechanisms to detect that and enable convergence?
I want a mechanism to determine if two party's view of a collection are equivalent. I want to be able to query if an object is contained in a collection without enumerating the whole collection. I want a mechanism to request re-delivery or maybe failed delivery notifications.
For what it's worth, these are all goals that would align well with the interests of a broad set of implementors. I make a little noise now and again about the SWICG forum task force, but directly addressing some of these concerns would definitely be on our radar.
Current focus is on aligning on a common object type for higher level collections (the context), but I'm thinking that Collection (ordered, ideally) would be the best fit and also allow for future use cases like you mentioned earlier.
You have the ideas, we might be able to supply the coordination...
Just tooted from my toot.community account, announcing the existence of this one. I suppose I forgot that #ActivityPub is pretty chatty. It took the whole server down in a couple of seconds.
Everything #tech has an overhyped cycle (usually in the beginning of its introduction to a critical mass but not always).
If you’re reading this on Mastodon then you’ll likely rightly think about #AI#Apple etc.
But also #Mastodon#ActivityPub#WordPress etc also had theirs. Maybe you weren’t around for them. And these (and more) have settled into reasonable realistic expectations. It’s a pattern.
Point? Maybe none. But pointing out overhype maybe is something some don’t bother with.
Today was a great set of meetings and discussions, moving the #Fediverse forward. Nice to reconnect after too long with @chrismessina - and to meet @snarfed.org@snarfed.org @J12t@anca@frozencanuck in person, lots more connections to make tomorrow. It is an exciting time in the #ActivityPub and #MastodonAPI ecosystem!
@julian a few different meetings - not connected to a specific event in most cases - there was a small gathering hosted by Flipboard today, as well. I'd certainly love to meet you in person at some stage soon!
@iamlayer8@IceCubesApp I would say this could be added to any of the three!
If we want to have this feature ASAP it could be done in a client (in a hacky way)
This definitely should be added to Mastodon, and then added to its API
This behavior should be documented in AP somewhere for best practices for all software to implement.
@liaizon@iamlayer8 The thing is, what qualifies as a response worthy of a notification?
I'd argue that at minimum Mastodon could notify you if you receive responses to reply chains you've commented in. That would go a long way towards reducing mention spam.
Mastodon doesn't really store a context that can be referred against, though it is of course possible.
ActivityPub supports the context property, which the forum working group is hoping to support.
FWIW NodeBB already supports topic notifications, because we build our own context. If @liaizon or anyone else I follow replies to your post, I'll still be notified, even if I am not mentioned!