informapirata

@julian Now that our server's federation issues have been resolved, I've finally had the chance to fully appreciate the new crossposting feature. It's an excellent feature that provides a great user experience for my forum users.

I should add that this feature also solves at least one of the problems that arose from the inability to move threads to remote categories. If I accidentally moved threads from a remote category to a local one, I couldn't restore the status quo. Today, however, this problem doesn't arise, because the thread remains (also) in its original category.

So, first of all, I'm wondering if you'd reevaluate my observations and arguments in favor of restoring the feature that allowed a thread to be assigned (at least at the local forum level) to a remote community. And, since the new crossposting feature is better suited to this purpose, if you think it's possible to direct crossposting (rather than moving) to remote categories as well.

@julian said:

Credo che quando chiedi di spostare un argomento in una categoria remota, intendi anche condividere la discussione in quella categoria remota, giusto?

Yes, but this is what was already happening before.

Of course, the "move" should only be visible on my forum. The move must not (and could not) affect the followers of the original category. It wouldn't even be right for someone to actually remove a topic from one Lemmy community and move it to a different Lemmy community!
And in fact, when I could do this with previous versions of NodeBB, the "move" never affected the federation.

Since I don't write in English and there could be problems with translation, I'll try to explain better with an example:

Starting situation:

1. I administer the citiverse.it forum.
2. I have decided to "capture" the Lemmy community at https://feddit.it/c/fediverso/
3. That community will be visible in my forum at the link https://citiverse.it/category/fediverso@feddit.it
4. From that link, my forum users will be able to publish new posts that will also be read by all followers of https://feddit.it/c/fediverso/
5. I also decide not to display the communities https://lemmy.lemmy/c/fediverso/ and https://piefed.piefed/c/fediverso/ on my home page.
6. However, since I want some topics from the communities https://lemmy.lemmy/c/fediverso/ and https://piefed.piefed/c/fediverso/ to be seen by my users, I have decided to "move" the most interesting conversations so that they can be seen within the community. https://citiverse.it/category/fediverso@feddit.it (as it was before)
7. I know perfectly well that this won't actually move conversations from feddit.it to lemmy.lemmy, but this way I get several advantages.
8. First advantage: I can avoid creating a local category https://citiverse.it/category/15/discussioni-sul-fediverso-italiano because I will already have a "remote category" https://citiverse.it/category/fediverso@feddit.it (today, however, if I want to move conversations I am forced to do so in a local category).
9. Second advantage: if I had two categories on the fediverse, a local category and a community "captured" as a remote category, my users wouldn't know whether to post on https://citiverse.it/category/15/discussioni-sul-fediverso-italiano or on https://citiverse.it/category/fediverso@feddit.it, and this would divide User contributions on topics will inevitably end up in two different categories.
10. Third advantage: Furthermore, if my users posted on https://citiverse.it/category/15/discussioni-sul-fediverso-italiano, almost no one would see them, because the Lemmy community https://citiverse.it/category/fediverso@feddit.it has a thousand followers, and I prefer to concentrate the conversations of citiverse.it users in a single community.
11. Fourth advantage: When I capture a conversation from piefed.piefed and "move" it to my "remote category" https://citiverse.it/category/fediverso@feddit.it, my forum users will reply to the discussion that started in the original remote category.
12. Fifth advantage: If my citiverse.it NodeBB fails to capture posts that a user has decided to publish on the Lemmy community https://feddit.it/c/fediverso/, I can manually move the conversation, and my users won't even notice the technical problem.

13: Sixth advantage: my forum will appear more populated with conversations, making it seem less deserted.

As you can see, I don't want the move to affect the federation, but rather an "optical effect": I want my users to have a better user experience. And I want it to be the same even for those users who don't know or aren't interested in learning about the federation.

To recap

The move should be just an optical effect that only my forum users can see.

I hope I explained myself better.

@julian said:

In general, moving topics between remote categories is disallowed because it's misrepresentation

I respect all your work @julian and admire the fact that you've never made a mistake so far. However, regarding moving discussions from one category to a remote category, you're making a error in your judgment.

I may be the one who's missing the point, but if you're available, I can explain in detail all the reasons why allowing the move to a remote category doesn't inconvenience anyone but has only advantages, while preventing this categorization has only disadvantages.

Let me know if you'd like me to continue my argument. Otherwise, if you think it's pointless, I won't continue.

@sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net @kichae@wanderingadventure.party

No, be careful. We have a terminology problem.

@ska said that there are some remote categories on our NodeBB citiverse.it. Among these, for example, is the category https://citiverse.it/category/test@feddit.it, which represents the Lemmy @test@feddit.it community, which can be found at https://feddit.it/c/test.

So the category https://citiverse.it/category/test@feddit.it is none other than the community https://feddit.it/c/test. (In exactly the same way, the category https://activitypub.space/category/fediverse@lemmy.world is none other than the community https://lemmy.world/c/fediverse.)

The problem @ska pointed out is that for a few months now, if a Lemmy or Piefed user publishes a post on https://feddit.it/c/test, the category https://citiverse.it/category/test@feddit.it takes this into account and represents the post. On the other hand, if the post is published by a social media user (mastodon, friendica, etc.) the category doesn't republish it.

As I already told @julian this is a pretty serious problem, especially since in the past I could at least "move" the conversation manually to the "remote category"; but unfortunately (due to an architectural choice I completely disagree with... oh well! :cry: ), for about ten versions now, it's no longer possible to "move" conversations to just the local categories.

But it should be clear that the main problem is that my system can no longer categorize social posts published in Lemmy categories!

PS: It seems to be a problem with our instance. In fact, I ran some tests:

1: from mastodon to Piefed
https://activitypub.space/topic/6a216416-fa81-49b2-8026-a14feda26556/decentralized-social-media-what-creators-need-to-know-about-web3-platforms

2: from Friendica to lemmy.ml
https://activitypub.space/topic/ebca3327-5273-405c-a5e9-0bd31099d684/decentralized-social-media-what-creators-need-to-know-about-web3-platforms

3: From Mastodon to Lemmy.World
https://activitypub.space/topic/5a2cce1e-64d1-4061-bab6-7043a157ace8/decentralized-social-media-what-creators-need-to-know-about-web3-platforms

And the activitypub.space nodebb catches them all.

On the other hand, citiverse.it doesn't catch a single one! :disappointed_relieved: :face_palm:

1: https://citiverse.it/topic/9f8bf755-ffcd-4bbd-9d89-41f5ccac93a5/decentralized-social-media-what-creators-need-to-know-about-web3-platforms

2: https://citiverse.it/topic/7dbfdd67-c46c-4e56-bae6-36ad406fb71d/decentralized-social-media-what-creators-need-to-know-about-web3-platforms

3: https://citiverse.it/topic/4a6b8296-c735-4201-8369-78a5d7d9bfb9/decentralized-social-media-what-creators-need-to-know-about-web3-platforms