Scope of the SocialHub Policy

Community SocialHub Policy
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Does this policy apply to FEP discussions on Codeberg?

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Good question, @eprodrom. I’d say it does, but implicitly. The FEP process originated from this community, and discussions take place here. But like many aspects of the process it hasn’t been given additional consideration, nor formalization.

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I also made this point here. It would be very bad to start fragment the community even more by discussing FEPs both here and in the codeberg repository.

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I second this. I’m not sure how such decisions are made though. Two possibilities occur to me;

  • The cat-herding(1) consensus method: we just keep talking about it wherever affected people gather, until consensus emerges organically. When it does, people will follow the majority who are actioning that consenus.

  • We defer to the Social CG to decide matters involving fediverse protocol standards work, and ask for decisions about them to be formalised at those meetings. We then communicate those decisions across all relevant dev watering holes, to be actioned.

Thoughts?

(1) Please let me know if the cat-herding metaphor bothers you. I’ve explained my understanding of what it means and why some of us use it here:

TL;DR No offence is meant to any human beings (or cats!)

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I believe SocialHub and FEP are mostly governed by the DoOcracy principle. So it’s just the usual utopian “Do as I do”-world.

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That’s the sane default, yes. But my point was that it’s not the only option.

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The reason for DoOcracy is that anything else requires dedicated volunteers putting loads of energy in and willing to do unthankful chores, effectively volunteering as “cat herders”. Offloading that to SocialCG would not bring much change to that, except maybe if SocialCG brings more authority to the table (e.g “give feedback until this date, otherwise this is the adopted approach”).

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It seems self-evident to me that as the current W3C group for ActivityPub standards, the SocialCG has the ultimate responsibility for any AP update process, and therefore more legitimacy on that process, than any other coordinating body. Fediverse.party could issue an “official” consensus on where FEP development ought to take place, but most people would ignore us, and fair enough.

Whereas if a consensus is formalised at the SocialCG, in a transparent, public-facing way, then devs are fairly likely to either go with it. Or get the issue raised there again, to explain why they disagree with said decision, and try to get it changed. If that’s not true, what’s the point of standards bodies in the first place?

It’s akin to the process of getting Open Source licenses recognised. Sure, the OSI has no formal power to make anyone treat a given license as Open Source, or not. At the end of the day, each person can make that assessment for themselves. And yet, the OSI clearly has a tremendous practical influence over what is and isn’t counted as Open Source. As well as providing a transparent structure for challenging and adjusting those boundaries, as necessary.

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Thanks. So, if I have a problem with how someone is behaving in PRs on codeberg, what do I do next?

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If that person is a member here, then it can be brought to discussion on this forum. It may be brought to attention in a Well-Being topic, and well-being to mediate. OTOH if the person is not a member but just someone with a Codeberg account, then the options are more limited. A friendly reminder to behave can easily turn into heated exchange and completely derail the issue/PR discussion. Forgejo, the software that Codeberg runs, will get more moderation facilities that allow e.g. blocking a person access to repo’s and org.

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