Well that is weird, why did the link get confuzzled…

Response from Dan

https://mastodon.social/[dansup](https://activitypub.space/user/dansup)/115678527443322224

You jest, but I’m pretty sure someone out there made a cli interface for AP.

fijxu@programming.dev nadeko… Why does that sound familiar? I think you used to host a Canadian Invidious instance I used to use! 😂

My go-to is spectra.video, run by deadsuperhero@lemmy.ml

silverpill@mitra.social isn’t wrong though, in many cases the posts do mean to be posted in that community.

But it’s an expressive thing. I’m able to mention a community like startrek@startrek.website and it won’t be posted there, because I’m only mentioning that community.

And yes, Mastodon needs mention spam to function because otherwise people you reply to won’t know they received a reply. It’s … an approach.

If it’s not an issue currently, then that’s even better 👍

At least on NodeBB we only post to one community, but it’d still happen even if other communities on other instances were mentioned first, so it could still be abused.

E.g. mention four communities on four different instances, get posted to four communities.

I’ve been looking into how to accomplish this too… because it is a UI/UX problem and I am very bad at designing user interfaces.

Mixing them like so works, although it’s hard because then it minimizes the size of topics (since it is just the title.) It means microblog content get a bit of a UI boost due to on screen size.

Limiting the max height of microblog posts and showing a snippet of the threaded content OP is another way, but that makes the page more feed-like and less of a “topic listing”, which isn’t always the way to go either.

For reference, NodeBB also mixes threads and microblog posts. We do this by generating a title from microblog posts. It’s not the best solution either.

auster@thebrainbin.org may I ask you to expand in what you mean by “underlying engine”?

If you’re talking about ActivityPub then it’s a open standard which isn’t beholden to any one organization. It’s like saying HTML is bad because websites are all forced to use it as the underlying engine.

I personally feel that the technical and mental overhead of maintaining a bridge is much worse than the overhead of a slowly changing standard. What if there are bridges for 20 different protocols, 200? When does it get unwieldy?

There is, but I am not sold on giving up entirely on the idea simply because disparate communities might not want to talk to another.

I agree that treading lightly is paramount, but the benefits of cross-community interaction could very much be worth it!

One thing is for sure: making this an opt-out is not the way forward.

What if upon cross-posting the default is separation, but a request is sent to the original community to request a comment tree merge?

Then you don’t have to share comment space with the tankies unless you wish it

cc blaze@piefed.zip

That’s one of the issues that need to be worked through. It’s a totally legitimate concern.

In cases where communities with polarising viewpoints discuss the same topic, it would lead to inter-community disputes and exacerbate some instance relationships.

One solution would be to have the original community be responsible for moderation, and moderation actions from cross-posted communities only affect their “view”, so to speak.

I don’t know what the answer is quite yet.

From a discoverability standpoint it would be beneficial to see other communities’ conversations on the same post.

Hmm… that’s nice, but the comments are still separated.

It would be better if the separate reply chains were integrated but I know there are potential issues that need to be thought through.

blaze@piefed.zip said in The problem of cross-community posting: > That’s a complete overhaul compared to what Lemmy/PieFed/Mbin are doing now.

That might be the case, but it really depends on how the backend is structured. Are the posts and communities so strictly structured that a post cannot be a part of multiple communities? (rimu@piefed.social just pinging you about this)

In NodeBB categories and topics are all distinct elements, and the fact that a topic belongs in a category is contrived. A topic could be part of a user (pinned topics anyone?), a group (group only conversations?), or in this case… multiple categories.

Yup. This is how NodeBB does it, and why cross posting will work with less of an overhaul.

Yes. It is being worked on, and you are not far off.

Respondents here have mentioned that Piefed and Lemmy list cross-posts in places, sometimes in the community listing, sometimes in the post itself.

That’s missing the point, which is that the conversations should be combined.

Take it a step further, though. You shouldn’t have to combine posts, they should all be the same post.

So how do we get there? Both Piefed and Lemmy do this internally, and don’t expose this to other instances. NodeBB (aka me) is hoping to explore this question and put in the protocol research to make this a reality. I’ll be working together with members of the Forum and Threaded Discussions Working Group about these things. (forum-wg@community.nodebb.org)

The issue (as usual) is buy-in from Lemmy and Piefed (and don’t forget mbin!) We all have to move in lockstep so that nobody gets left behind.

We’ve only just started discussions on how this might work, but hopefully we’ll be able to make this a reality soon.

This is an important thing to consider, and why NodeBB decided to even pursue federation at all.

It’s arguable that we’ve reached the point at which forums cannot organically grow due to the ubiquity of social media. Depending on who you ask, we’ve reached that point 10+ years ago already.

It’s becoming increasing imperative that forums federate or risk dying due to attrition. Forums used to be the social network for niche topics. Facebook (with Groups) and Twitter (with hashtags) started competing, and Reddit (with subreddits) made another huge dent.

There are some communities that fear integrating with AP will cause their local communities to become flooded with just anybody. Those fears are unjustified, but understandable.

Heckin’ yeah it is. :sunglasses:

Hey! Thanks for the concise reply. There’s a lot of technical stuff I can say about Discourse and such, but because I am the maintainer for NodeBB it is probably in my best interest to keep my mouth shut as we directly compete!

Anyhow, the OrderedCollection stuff is actually all from me. I’ve been working as part of the Threadiverse working group to bring intercompatible formats to all threadiverse software, which besides Discourse and NodeBB, includes Lemmy, Piefed, and Mbin.

The OrderedCollection enables software (like NodeBB) to quickly backfill entire topics. This is a huge problem on the microblog-side of the fediverse, and is not really a problem on the theadiverse, since there is already strong support for synchronization. However, smaller instances often do run into issues where they can’t ever “catch up” on old posts because there’s no way to get those posts. (e.g. start following a new community, you can’t read any of the old content)

To that end, Lemmy and Piefed have (or soon will) ship code to allow software to backfill using OrderedCollections. They don’t use them yet, but they will provide them. It helps software like mine because I will then be able to see entire threads from communities I don’t even know about or follow. It’s a huge boost to discovery! :smile:

> while Discourse decided to use an OrderedCollection, with the first item being the opening post.

NodeBB also does this, but they’re not incompatible per se. You’ll see NodeBB topics showing up just fine on Lemmy and Piefed (see activitypub@community.nodebb.org or general), and that’s because NodeBB does the extra step of announcing OP and replies, just like Lemmy/Piefed.

Importantly, Discourse does this too, but because of the inability to find Discourse categories, I don’t think it’s easy to follow them. Chicken and egg, really. The way the AP integration in Discourse is built-out, it is more insular by design. Threads from Discourse only ever go out to the fediverse, you can’t post in from the fediverse. That makes those communities much more insular by design and severely limits discovery.