In the interests of moving past the current impasse, let me re-iterate that the only reason why one needs to consider private groups is so that we don’t end up with multiple ways of posting to them in the future that will be different. We require a mechanism which works for both. So I’ll propose a simple set of basic requirements and see if we can move forward:
- A group MUST provide an actor type of ‘Group’ so we can determine how to address it.
- Posting to a group MUST support FEP-400e as a mechanism and MUST use that mechanism whenever posting to a group remotely. Implementations are free to support additional mechanisms (hashtags, mentions, DMs, wall-posting, etc.) as desired.
- A message MUST NOT be cross-posted to multiple groups.
- Followups to the group MUST be sent to the group actor and SHOULD only be sent to the group actor. They MUST NOT include any external actors (non group members) unless it can be determined in advance that the audience for this particular group conversation is public.
- Groups MUST support ‘Join’ for group membership. They MAY support ‘Follow’ or other methods.
This is just a proposal. Feel free to suggest changes. Under the covers, as long as your group implementation abides by this or a similar basic set of conventions it actually doesn’t matter how it works under the hood or whether it is public or private.