Making categories accessible in the fediverse

Continuing the discussion from SocialCG should consult SocialHub before appropriating tasks:

I’m a bit behind on how AP federation works between forums, so I’m not sure what this means. Is the Fediversity category an example of what you mean by “subforum”? If I’m still an admin of Fediversity, can you (or anyone) tell me what I need to do to make it accessible from the fediverse? That’s something I’d very much like to do (if I still have the privileges).

Funny thing about forums is there is lots of nomenclatural differences that make describing them annoying haha.

Anyway. I said “subforum”, but both Discourse and NodeBB refer to them as “categories”. Fediversity is one of those, yes.

The only two (@aschrijver or @how could correct me if I’m wrong) categories are federating.

The ForumWG category which is also synced with NodeBB’s ForumWG category, and the “NodeBB” category which is synced with NodeBB’s “ActivityPub” category.

Oh, I think this forum also pulls in fediverse weekly report? Three.

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Thanks for the clarification.

So what do we need to do to make the rest of the categories available over AP federation? Are there particular reasons why it hasn’t been done already?

There’s also a federated tag that is on the Fediverse, so if you want a specific discussion there, you can tag it.

One reason why not everything is federated is that not everything is public. Some discussions are reserved to regular members to keep some things quiet – or, more exactly: between us – such as the Well-Being category that deals with internal tensions.

Another reason is the instability of the process so far, but maybe @angus has matured the fedeation code, I could not follow closely and let him manage the plugin upgrades as he sees fit.

Personally I’d be happy to see more federated discussions since that would bring more voices.
Also each category has category hosts who have the ability to turn on the federation feature, so you may ask them to do so. Each group in Software can do it for themselves, since each software is responsible for its own sub-category.

You see, it’s all a matter of community will: everything is in place.

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Do they all know that?

I guess not. If there were more people in the various teams, we certainly could take the time to document things properly.

I’m starting to see why you and @aschrijver seems so pessimistic about community self-management here. The Fediversity category, it turns out, has one remaining host (Tao) who apparently hasn’t logged in since 2021. I’ve requested to take on the role, but it does make me wonder how many other categories are in a similar position?

Which may explain @devnull’s observation about the low take up for federating categories.

Well, if there is a proposal to make Community and ActivityPub federated, that’s an easy one to do.

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I haven’t seen any response to this. Am I missing something? Has my request slipped through the cracks?

If the admins/ mods (@how @nightpool @angus @pfefferle @weex @marnanel) have discussed it and agreed not to give me this role, that’s totally fine. But it would be good to know that’s the outcome, and the Fediversity category still needs someone to be an active host.

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@bumblefudge you consistently seem like an open-minded and well balanced human. Would you be willing to act as a host on the Fediversity category here?

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Aw, flattery is my favorite love language! I don’t know if I should step up to mod role at the moment because I’m stretched thin across a lot of (non-Fediverse-related) fora and github repos already, plus my client-load is a little unstable at the moment and not suited to more duties and email-filters. Maybe in Q1 I’ll be a little stabler, and either have more paying work or less volunteer mod load?

As for the specific category, I maybe am not the best possible mod since I’m kinda focused on AP at the protocol level and not really experienced enough or attentive enough to the many flavors of AP software that real people are actually using out in the real fediverse. Ideally someone who spends more of each day actually using the Fediverse (with accounts on various servers across peertube and pixelfed and pleroma) would be the person who best positioned to both bugtrap federation AND moderate wild claims about what’s broken and what different communities think. Just dreamcasting here, not sure someone meeting that profile could be found and talked into modding, but they’d be plan A if so, right?

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I’m now a host of the Fediversity category, thanks for actioning that @how. But I’ve looked through all the settings I can find, but I can’t find anything that would allow me to turn AP federation on for the category. What am I missing?

Respect for the self-care :slight_smile: Not wanting to twist your arm at all, but just for clarity …

Discussion in the Fediversity has strolled along quite happily without any host at all for the last couple of years, and I’m not expecting that to change. So the role of host is almost purely ceremonial at this point. I just prefer to have at least one responsible person with the admin powers to check me, in the unlikely event that the Super Cow Power goes to my head, and I start running the category like something out of Scarface ; )

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Ah sorry for that, the settings moved from the category to plugin admin.

Is the following screenshot (sorry for lack of A11y) what you want?

Just to be clear, that means that only site admins can turn on AP federation for a category, not its hosts?

Looks like it.

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