It’s this kind of thinig that makes me think of PieFed as just a pile of hacks with no serious consideration for the Fediverse
Was it necessary ? I invite you to rewritte.
Comment on PieFed 1.4 is released - emoji, federated stackoverflow and AI content filters
rglullis@communick.news 3 weeks ago
It’s this kind of thinig that makes me think of PieFed as just a pile of hacks with no serious consideration for the Fediverse
Designating which comment is an answer involves federating a new Activity:
{ "id": "https://piefed.social/activities/answer/hgb4iO4b8UAFRTn", "type": "ChooseAnswer", "actor": "https://piefed.socialz/u/rimu", "object": "https://piefed.ngrok.app/comment/224", "@context": ["https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams", "https://w3id.org/security/v1"], "audience": "https://crust.piefed.social/c/linux_questions", "to": ["https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public"], "cc": ["https://crust.piefed.social/c/linux_questions"] }
There are at least three different ways to implement this in a way compatible with ActivityPub:
- Send an “as:accept” activity with the comment as the object.
- Add an attribute for the comment indicating that it has been selected.
- Create a collection for chosen answers, add to the post object.
Snoopy@piefed.social 1 week ago
rglullis@communick.news 1 week ago
Off the top of my head, piefed is:
- Sending pseudonymous actor ids to hide votes
- "Migrating" communities by re-creating activities and objects on their own server, just rewriting the URLs the piefed server actually was the authoritative source.
- Integrating functionality that is hardcoded to specific instances/groups (auto-posting new communities on !newcommunities@lemmy.world)
- Integrating lemmy-federate directly into the instance - which is a horrendous idea if you consider that will lead to every instance holding a copy of the messages, even if no one there actually follows or interacts with it.
- Proposing a completely out-of-band and a custom activity protocol to notify moderation reports
- generating a JSON-LD document filled with unspecified terms.
I am not here to gate-keep anything. If the devs are having fun working on it and if the users are happy with the product they are getting, more power to them.
It might be that piefed gets enough users and outside interest to force the team to be more discipline and mature about their practices, but to an outsider this looks more and more like a bunch of amateurs building stuff for fun, and not something that can become a viable alternative for a open social web.
Skavau@piefed.social 1 week ago
Sending pseudonymous actor ids to hide votes
This has long been scrapped. You can choose to not federate out your own downvotes now for maximum anonymity, but this was widely disliked so it was dropped.
“Migrating” communities by re-creating activities and objects on their own server, just rewriting the URLs and pretending the piefed server actually was the original source.
Yup. Although this isn’t complete in many cases, but is an entirely transparent process. I’ve told you this has vast fediverse support because it enables community modularity, which is needed in a world where instances will go offline, causing communities to be orphaned.
Integrating functionality that is hardcoded to specific instances/groups (auto-posting new communities on !newcommunities@lemmy.world)
This was agreed with the moderators of said community.
Integrating lemmy-federate directly into the instance - which is a horrendous idea if you consider that will lead to every piefed instance holding every copy of the messages, even if no one in the instance actually follows or interacts with it.
I’m not quite sure how this specifically functions for new instances, but I have suggested this be opt-in rather than opt-out.
rglullis@communick.news 1 week ago
maximum anonymity, but this was widely disliked so it was dropped.
Maximum anonymity is a lie. Users still need to trust the server admin. The truth is that the Fediverse is not a secure/private messaging platform, and attempts to hide this from the users might be well-intentioned but will bite the devs in the ass, sooner or later.
this has vast fediverse support because it enables community modularity, which is needed in a world where instances will go offline, causing communities to be orphaned.
To solve this it would be better to have the PieFed team pushing/implementing the appropriate FEPs (FEP-7952 and FEP-EF61) instead of an-hoc hack.
This was agreed with the moderators of said community.
Not the point. The point is that the devs are taking the “everything and the kitchen sink” approach to features, prioritizing any type of functionality that is minimally useful to the users instead of putting some effort on the harder stuff.
I have suggested (lemmy-federate) be opt-in rather than opt-out.
Doesn’t matter. Admins will see it, think “that is nice!”, turn it on and only realize later that their database is completely bloated with data that is not really needed. Meanwhile, the real problem of content discovery could be solved by implementing pull-based federation and client-side caching, but again this type of work is not being done because it’s not something that the users see directly.
drmoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’m confused - this seems like idiomatic way to add new features in activity pub? What’s actually missing here?
rglullis@communick.news 2 weeks ago
What’s actually missing here?
At the very least, it is missing a context definition in the JSON-LD document that describes the term. What does a document of type
ChooseAnswermean if the provided @context entry only makes references to activitystreams and security/v1 namespaces?More than that, it is missing a clear need. There is no need to specify a new vocabulary term when
as:acceptis right there: Why define a new term when something like{ "id": "https://piefed.social/activities/answer/hgb4iO4b8UAFRTn", "type": "Accept", "actor": "https://piefed.socialz/u/rimu", "object": "https://piefed.ngrok.app/comment/224", "target": "https://piefed.ngrok.app/post/123", "@context": ["https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams", "https://w3id.org/security/v1"], "audience": "https://crust.piefed.social/c/linux_questions", "to": ["https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public"], "cc": ["https://crust.piefed.social/c/linux_questions"] }
can represent the information that a comment has been accepted as a good answer to the question?
Blaze@piefed.zip 3 weeks ago
Feel free to open a PR: https://codeberg.org/rimu/pyfedi
rglullis@communick.news 3 weeks ago
This is not a matter of “opening a PR”. The fact that they are adding features in this completely ad-hoc manner shows that they are prioritizing features for piefed over interoperability with the wider Fediverse. If my job was to go around convincing every AP developer that their approach is flawed and to fix their mistakes, I’d be doing nothing else with my life.
What I can do though is to create a framework that makes it easy to work with JSON-LD and occasionally file bug reports
An aside: this “feel free to open a PR” - without any justification or discussion about the merit of issue at hand - is the standard passive-aggressive response from every developer who is not interested in making the change. It’s sad to see that it’s also becoming the go-to retort for the project cheerleaders…
Blaze@piefed.zip 3 weeks ago
How is creating a new Activity type preventing compatibility with the rest of the Fediverse? Is there any other Fediverse platform that has a similar feature that Piefed could have replicated?
When you’re the first one doing something with ActivityPub, you have to create it yourself. This is not perfect, and you raise valid points, hence my suggestion to engage on the Codeberg.
On the other hand, for other Piefed features inspired by existing implementations such as the emoji reactions, the feature is compatible with those platforms which already supported the feature.
Regarding your last paragraph, picking the one feature for which the implementation can be improved and saying “It’s this kind of thinig that makes me think of PieFed as just a pile of hacks with no serious consideration for the Fediverse” while it’s clearly not true seems fully aggressive.
rglullis@communick.news 3 weeks ago
If they chose to use any of the 3 solutions I proposed, there would be no changes on the other servers to receive and parse the message. But because it uses a different type, now those serves that want to store the information about an answer being accepted have to write code specifically to handle messages from PieFed.
It also works in the other direction: if I want to send an “accept” activity for a comment, I could do it from my server and PieFed could easily understand it as well. But because they want to create their own ad-hoc solution, then they won’t be able to.
No, you don’t. The whole point of Linked Data and RDF is that nodes can send data to each other without having to agree on any new protocol
You are only making my point. Emojis have already a defined extension, this is why it’s easier to adopt it.
It’s not just that. They also proposed some ad-hoc activities for moderation in the past and their “import community” works by taking posts and rewriting them as if they originated in the piefed instance. These are all signs that the devs either don’t understand or don’t care about JSON-LD as an standard.
IndustryStandard@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Because there is no real need for Piefed to create their own activity type besides it being slightly easier for their devs to do everything exactly the way they want.
But this is very detrimental to the fediverse because it means that everyone would have to change their software to suit the needs of Piefed.
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aasatru@kbin.earth 2 weeks ago
Man, the entitlement. Especially coming from the only person I know of who is here with the explicit goal of monetizing the platform.
There's a way of voicing concerns and criticisms in a way that is constructive, helpful, and in good faith, inviting to an open discussion with concerned parties. Yours is not that.
rglullis@communick.news 2 weeks ago
Believing that the we need professional hosting providers to have a sustainable Fediverse != “Monetizing the platform”.
Besides, I’ve already voiced similar concerns through different venues. The devs made it clear they are not interested in developing pieces with a focus on standards compliance. They care about throwing as many features as possible to their system.
It’s fine, it’s their project, they can do whatever they want. It doesn’t mean that I don’t have the right to have an opinion about it.