Extended mentions via activitypub

Feature
1

I would like to be able to mention people in the fediverse, especially on other Discourse instances, using the extended fediverse mention scheme: @toka@memlab.thomaskalka.de

I would expect this to trigger a notification at the other end.

I would also be happy to discuss how mentions of category and tag actors could be handled.

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2

Testing mention of @toka from https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/extended-mentions-via-activitypub/5091.

Result: Indeed does not yield a proper mention on meta.discourse.org yet.

3

Hm. I would expect to mention you here with @aschrijver. This worked for your last post. I would expect to mention you at meta with @aschriejver@meta.discourse.org

What one could ask for publishing/syncing a comment with activitypub: convert the here local mention to a full qualified mention on the other end.

4

from meta: Hm. Wondering why activitypub creates users with a home here (at meta), when their comments come from a federated site.

I would expect the activitypub plugin to create proxy users with full Fediverse home address. For the account I am replying to, this should be https://meta.discourse.org/u/@toka@socialhub.activitypub.rocks instead of https://meta.discourse.org/u/toka. (@angus)

5

Here’s what happens.

  1. An activity is received from a remote source.
  2. We store the Activity, Actor and Object separately in the database (“AP Objects”)
  3. The AP Objects are associated with their Discourse equivalents, e.g. an Actor gets a User.

In the ActivityPub protocol the real “full Fediverse home address” of an Actor is their id. That is stored in step 2 exactly as its received from the remote source. It doesn’t normally look like @toka@socialhub.activitypub.rocks. That addressing convention, i.e. username@domain.com is derived from the use of Webfinger in the Fediverse, and, while we support and use Webfinger, it is not part of the ActivityPub protocol itself.

In short, we’ll likely be adding support for mentions in the way you’re expecting in the medium term. There will be many issues and edge cases to be figured out in that integration. Discourse mentions are a rich, and Discourse-specific, feature, somewhat different from mentions you’re used to in Mastodon. Nevertheless, I’m confident we can find a way to make them work. Please be patient on that front.

3 Likes
6

Thanks. Would like to know if the current implementation “eats” usernames at meta (toka and aschrijver1 in the conversation here) or this is only a display artifact.

7

Currently fediverse mentions will have no effect. They’re currently just text strings that are part of the post content.

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