Improve following of Discourse categories on the fediverse

Taking the opportunity to pass some feedback regarding the AP plugin into this federated category..

A post by @jdp23:

Final thoughts re: FediCon 2025

Yeah. I have no idea how to follow SocialHub discussions Mastodon account. I see this post because I'm following you, but it's disembodied -- I don't see the rest of the thread. And I can search for @community@socialhub.activity.rocks but its profile is empty.

Not only that, If I'm reading it over there, and see something I want to reply to from here, doing the "copy this URL" trick doesn't work. Does that mean I'm not in the fediverse??? Hard to know, but in any case I haven't yet figured out how I can participate in discussions there except by replying to somebody I follow.

@julian

And the follow-up by @devnull:

Final thoughts re: FediCon 2025

@jdp23@neuromatch.social I don't want to get overly technical about it, but that's due to fixable deficiencies in Discourse's AP integration.

I think you should be able to follow the @community@socialhub.activity.rocks actor, no?

The "copy URL" flow is especially prevalent on the fediverse, but Discourse doesn't support it (neither does Ghost, while I am talking about it.)

There is a different, related, discussion on the impact of forum federation on the notion of "community": https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/against-fragmentation-unifying-dev-discussions-with-forum-federation/5402

Thanks for summarizing this! To be clear, I don't know whether or not following @community@socialhub.activitypub.rocks from my Mastodon account would work -- I don't want these posts and replies cluttering up my home feed, just want to be able to I be able to read and participate in the conversations (so without following).

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jdp23:

I don’t want these posts and replies cluttering up my home feed

Apparently it’s possible in Mastodon to add Actors like this to a list and hide them from your Home feed. So you can follow the SH Actors that interest you and look at a list of their posts as and when you like, without SH posts cluttering up Home.

hmm, interesting idea, thanks! I'll see if that works.

I'm not convinced AP federation is actually working though. I followed @fediversity@socialhub.activitypub.rocks a few months back, and subscribed to make sure that I don't miss any new topics posted in Fediversity. When I search for that Actor in my micro-posting apps (Moshidon and FediLab on Android, enafore.social and vanilla Mastodon on the web), I don't see any posts newer than January this year, even though there have definitely been a bunch of new topics created in that category.

I will cross-post to what I just replied to..

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/standardizing-on-a-common-community-domain-as-ap-extension/1353/47?u=aschrijver

.. to state that the title of this topic is indicative of the development approaches that currently dominate our ecosystem. Which are not truly based on Needs, but more focused on putting app-level features or technical requirements on the wire. The overarching needs as I've tried to formulate them consively in the fragmentation discussion and which can constitute the Mission/Vision of SocialHub, is imho something akin to:

Mission. Support the communication and cocreation of all participants in the ActivityPub ecosystem to help foster healthy growth and evolution of the Fediverse.

Vision. An inclusive fediverse, collectively evolved, where people can find friends and peers in safe environments, to communicate and engage in rich social activities of all kinds.

Audience. Any fedizen from across the globe who interacts with others on the basis of Humanity and respect of each other's Freedoms and human rights.

I just posted this as a toot relating to Social coding commons, as it perfectly aligns with the vision of a peopleverse, where online social networking is supportive and enriching to our daily lives.

https://coding.social/introduction

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TLDR

A starting point for the development of the Discourse AP plugin might be "Provide Discourse Community Services to the Fediverse" and bring along the rich and healthy concept of Community that product development focuses on with the slogan "Discourse. The online home for your community". And the next step would then be to align and refine that need in close collaboration with other stakeholders in the forum space, such as @devnull of NodeBB, via Threadiverse task force, FEP's, etc.

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