The discussion is about Extended mentions via ActivityPub. thoka initiated the conversation, requesting the ability to mention people in the Fediverse, specifically on other Discourse instances, using the extended fediverse mention scheme (e.g., @toka@memlab.thomas-kalka.de).
aschrijver1 tested mentioning thoka from another Discourse instance but found it didn’t yield a proper mention. thoka suggested converting local mentions to fully qualified mentions on the other end when publishing or syncing comments with ActivityPub.
thoka also questioned why ActivityPub creates users with a home on the local instance instead of using their full Fediverse home address. angus explained that the ActivityPub protocol stores the Actor’s id and associates it with a Discourse user, but the @username@domain.com addressing convention is derived from Webfinger and not part of the ActivityPub protocol.
angus confirmed that support for mentions is planned but will require addressing many issues and edge cases. Currently, fediverse mentions have no effect and are treated as text strings (angus). thoka asked if the current implementation “eats” usernames or if it’s just a display artifact.
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.
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.
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.
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)
Here’s what happens.
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.
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.
Currently fediverse mentions will have no effect. They’re currently just text strings that are part of the post content.