An interesting hybrid version I'm a bit unsure of the technical issues connected to, is offering two seperate parts : the blockquoted text and a signature with a link.
If the resource still exist, give a link back to it, scoping the source, if it has been deleted, delete the link and any reference to source.
It means that we will have quotes that you can't doublecheck the context of. But by simply stripping the text of it original context, you drop it in the context of the post of the blockquote.
The Implementation issues with this model though....
The issue â as is the case with so many Fediverse headaches â is Mastodon, and its persistent behaviour of obfuscating the nature of the Fediverse itself. They really seem to bend over backwards to hide or distract from the fact that theyâre seeing content authored and hosted on other server software. I canât see them alerting users to the different contexts theyâre viewing while they remain the biggest game in town, unfortunately, which means Mastodon users will have no signals that there are different expectations on them when they hit âReplyâ.
But yeah, as a best practice for everywhere else, that seem like a really good basic courtesy.
The issue â as is the case with so many Fediverse headaches â is Mastodon, and its persistent behaviour of obfuscating the nature of the Fediverse itself. They really seem to bend over backwards to hide or distract from the fact that theyâre seeing content authored and hosted on other server software. I canât see them alerting users to the different contexts theyâre viewing while they remain the biggest game in town, unfortunately, which means Mastodon users will have no signals that there are different expectations on them when they hit âReplyâ.
But yeah, as a best practice for everywhere else, that seem like a really good basic courtesy.
The ability to arbitrarily and retroactively remove all traces of yourself from a discussion you had in public, via a quasi-persistent medium has always felt to me like a violation of everyone else in the discussion, but I, too, come from the forum space, where you just donât do that. The microblogging space doesnât seem to care, and the microblogging space currently dominates fedi. It kind of feels like a culture clash to me, and one of many reasons why forum-fedi and masto-fedi probably donât need a whole lot of cross-over.
This is a VERY interesting point, and I think it comes from the difference of context between forums and microblogging : A Forum always har a context and community : the message stand by itself, the user is secondary. Microblogging is more a way to communicate yourself ; the message is secondary.
Which makes the crossover a can of worms : A message from a forum published out of contex of the forum discussion to the Microverse, can be as bad as a miss-composed message being published as a forumpost.
On the other side, the value of fedi is in the ability to solve these kinds of context switches. It should be a part of HOW we do fedi.
Microblogs are also treats as ephemeral spaces, which is why people have long been caught off-guard by their old Tweets wrecking their lives. Itâs a space where people behave as if theyâre having a vocal conversation, and the form of âpublicâ theyâre in is like a public park. People are around who could hear, but they have to be at the park and nearby as itâs said to hear. The idea that someone could show up to the park 5 years later and put up a fuss over something that was casually expressed is an impossibility.
People have never treated forums as ephemeral. Theyâve always been quasi-permanent spaces, where even the ability to edit your posts or replies is often time gated, or outright disallowed.