I don’t know what’s going on, or what ActivityPub even is, but I think that is what causes this issue:
This topic does not have a category, only a tag. Surely this is not intended?
Ah, interesting. The activitypub tag is configured to receive topics from another community vi the ActivityPub protocol (it’s a two-way sync, topics and replies on meta also go to the other community).
However, it looks like the plugin doesn’t pick a default category for the topics it creates. I am not sure if this is strictly a plugin issue or an issue with meta.
@tobiaseigen is there a site setting for “default category to pick when none is specified”? I see we have a default composer category but that’s not quite the same thing.
This is intended.
I don’t think there’s such a thing as a default category in Discourse currently (strictly speaking). As you say, a default category in the composer is a different thing.
1 Like
@angus This also happened here. Is there a way to fix this, or is it not possible to specify the category when making the post via ActivityPub (to my understanding, this is Discourse (@Discourse@mastodon.social) - Mastodon), I think?
Perhaps a setting that would move topics created by ActivityPub into a specified category?
Thanks for the suggestions @NateDhaliwal.
To clarify that topic you linked to was originally created on socialhub.activitypub.rocks. You can see where it was originally posted in the ActivityPub info.
Perhaps if I go over how this works a little more you might see why that wouldn’t make sense.
Discourse supports two type of ActivityPub actors who can publish and receive posts: categories and tags. Currently on meta there are two categories and four tags which have ActivityPub enabled. You can see them here.
To achieve what you’re suggesting, the way to do that is to just create a category actor. Posts received by Announcements or Feature (i.e. posts sent to announcements@meta.discourse.org or feature@meta.discourse.org) simply go directly into those categories (if the category actor has “full topic” enabled).
What you’re noticing is that posts received by a tag actor, e.g. activitypub@meta.discourse.org for activitypub, don’t automatically go into a specific category. If you think about it within the context I’ve outlined, it would be a bit strange if they did.
The role of a tag is to taxonomically group topics across different categories. If there were a default category into which all posts sent to activitypub@meta.discourse.org ended up in, then we should just create an activitypub category and create an actor for that, instead of a tag.
Just stepping back a bit, if you think about this more broadly, it may be better to use a tag for a generic taxonomy like activitypub instead of a category, and manually categorise incoming topics as needed. There are more specific actors relating to specific categories, however activitypub may encompass a variety of types of topics.
Fundamentally this comes down to how a community wants to manage itself and its relationship with the fediverse. I don’t think technical solution is required here, at least not yet. Perhaps @tobiaseigen will have some further thoughts on how he wants to approach this question.
1 Like
I see. Thanks for the clarification!