Progress update for Conversational Contexts
community.nodebb.org
This past June, I put together a write-up about two major approaches to backfilling conversations. The ability to properly backfill conversations means we wi...

This past June, I put together a write-up about two major approaches to backfilling conversations. The ability to properly backfill conversations means we will be able to make major inroads toward solving the feeling that the fediverse is quiet.

I, alongside several other members of the SWICG Forums and Threaded Discussions Task Force (ForumWG) have been working toward building implementor support for Conversational Contexts — the ability to explicitly classify a set of objects as belonging to a conversation, whether that be a topic, reply tree, or similar.

I am happy to report that we have made some wonderful inroads this past few months!

This marks a major milestone in the adoption of conversational contexts. With Mastodon on board backfill will be possible with the majority of the microblogiverse. With Lemmy and Piefed on board, backfill will be possible with the majority of the threadiverse.

Remember that [email protected] was an early adopter of conversational contexts, and we have been able to backfill from WordPress blogs for quite awhile now (so that’s the blogiverse too)

I for one, am eagerly awaiting the next version of all of these softwares!!

  • some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    22 hours ago

    For some reason I assumed this was already how the fediverse worked, but I haven’t been here very long and it does explain some things, including the “empty” vibe in some lesser-populated places.

    This is super exciting for the fediverse and, naturally, I have questions. While this change will mostly bring positives and a better experience for users, there could also be more opportunities for shenanigans.

    What considerations are being given to data integrity/mutability and trust? Will all servers that touch a post have a distributed record of all comments and give network confirmation (a la blockchain)? Or does one server (e.g. the originator of each post, or the server with the most resources) act as a single authority of that post? Something else?

    Could one server be instructed to “go rogue” and submit bad content to the network, or go on a deletion/overwriting spree that ends up becoming permanent?

    What about resources? What impact will backfilling have on your average dude hosting a small instance?

    This is just where my mind goes, you see. I’m sure all this and more have been discussed and figured out already. If a public discussion is available to look at, I would love a link!

    • julian@activitypub.space
      3·
      21 hours ago

      Those are all very good questions, and exactly the sort of things that would be discussed at the ForumWG.

      Backfill is just one of the things (the main thing, currently) we touch on, but one of the more important ones, because the potential to ensure you have the entire conversation is important from a data completeness standpoint.

      The thing to remember is that there’s no one “owner” of a conversation. Right now it’s a pretty loose association… individual posts and notes can declare that they are part of a context, even if that isn’t the case. This beats the current system where there is no association at all.

      The difference here is that as a consumer of backfill, I can actually go to the context and verify this. We can extend this later on with context ownership, and defer responsibilities like moderation, interaction policies, forking/merging, etc.

      The long view of this is we intend to increasingly solidify the association between context and object over time.

    • wakest@piefed.socialEnglish
      3·
      21 hours ago

      There have been monthly meetings about this issue and surrounding ones that are open to the public if you really want to know more. There are years worth of discussions about it too but they are very spread around