Moving/ Mirroring Fediverse Ideas to SocialHub

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A few days ago, it occurred to me to wonder, why is Fediverse Ideas a Codeberg repo? Couldn’t it just as easily be a SocialHub category, like Fediversity? It could then be federated over AP, using Discourse forum federation, and people could follow and reply with their fediverse accounts.

This kicked off a fediverse discussion on the pros and cons involving @aschrijver, @dahukanna, @silverpill, @helge and @erlend_sh .

My understanding of the purpose of Fediverse Ideas is fleshed out nicely in the comment by @dahukanna;

Like the progression from:
“Idea [democratic tools so that any human with thoughts can participate with selected tool]
to Concept (d(em)o-ocratic tools so that anyone can participate in conversation & decision making)
to Implementation (co-creation tools so anyone can contribute to producing delivered assets)

Everyone who uses the fediverse for any length of time will probably end up having ideas for how to improve it. A place to share and discuss them, easily accessible to all, saves devs getting hit with slightly different flavours of the same ideas, over and over again. Like an FAQ for common suggestions, instead of common questions. It also helps to flesh out and refine these ideas, into something ready for use in a UX or FEP.

One concern I have is that being a repo doesn’t seem to be helping us get eyes on Fediverse Ideas. The last 19 FI issues were opened by me. The last one by anyone else was 4 months ago. Very few of these have attracted any comments.

A code forge repo is very easy for developers to use. But are devs the main target audience for FI? Isn’t this something where we want “power users” to describe our pain points in careful detail, for the edification of devs? Making it a forum category instead of a repo may make it easier for non-devs to join in.

I’m keen to hear from anyone who has any strong opinions about Fediverse Ideas continuing as it is, or who strongly supports my proposal. Also keen to hear any other thoughts, ideas, or concerns that might be relevant, however loosely.

FWIW A more ambitious idea, that might need to wait for more AP integration in Forgejo;

I wonder if it would be possible to cross-link a category here with the Fediverse Ideas repo? Such that an issue opened there would open a thread here, and vice-versa. With comments mirrored between the two.

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Let me remind everyone of @aschrijver’s quote:

“Any decentralized [ecosystem] requires a centralized substrate, and the more decentralized the approach is the more important it is that you can count on the underlying system.”

— Byrne Hobart. The Promise and Paradox of Decentralization

I think for me the ideal version of fediverse ideas would achieve something like this. Some statements might be simple:

Dating in the Fediverse: Cool idea, but should not be done until “TOPIC: harassment, abuse, unwanted content, …” is solved.

Other topics like

Use did:web to stop reliance on servers

might result in lengthy discussions. It would then be important to be able to collect the main points. I think also it would be important to be able to acknowledge unsolved issues and identify them as blockers (see dating app).

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We could certainly add an #fediversity:ideas category and create a topic for each Codeberg issue. Although Discourse-Github seem to integrate well with each other, there was not much work with Codeberg. But Codeberg is federating, right? So we could follow Codeberg issues and have the discussions popping up here…

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@helge Just to make sure we’re on the same page, are you telling me that your founding vision for Fediverse Ideas contrasts somewhat with the way I’ve been using it? If so, can you expand on the differences between the two?

The last thing I’d want to do is inadvertently hijack your project by scratching my own itch. Although the fact that you offered me admin privileges on the repo suggests you see our visions as at least compatible, if subtly different.

Is it? Can anyone confirm? Is it like Discourse, where AP federation needs to be turned on manually per subsection?

I tried searching a Fediverse Ideas issue link in FediLab, and the issue board itself, but couldn’t find them to interact from the verse.