#social 2017-07-31

2017-07-31 UTC
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ajordan cwebber2: I'm wondering if we should put some of this "how to express xyz" stuff directly into the spec? seems important to nail that down in the actual text, and we have to document it *somewhere*... "just implement AS2" is too ambiguous because AS2 is so flexible
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ajordan we'd probably get pushback from tantek for not introducing new features and not incubating but I'd argue that they're going in _as a result_ of incubation
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ajordan ben_thatmustbeme: finally read through JF2 :)
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ajordan just as a heads up, probably going to be sending you lots of issues/PRs in the next couple days
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cwebber2 ajordan: about that diaspora post, the bulk of criticism against AP is still the lack of mandatory signatures
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rhiaro the opening post of that diaspora thread says AS2 is just a draft :s when it was written it was at PR and the next week it was REC
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cwebber2 ajordan: I think "how to express blah blah" can be collected into a supplementary wiki page?
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cwebber2 https://discourse.diasporafoundation.org/t/lets-talk-about-activitypub/741/11?u=cwebber
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jaywink AP is still a draft since all the time when someone is implementing it a lot of questions on *how* to implement come up :)
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cwebber2 jaywink: are you replying to my last message? I said AS2, not AP :)
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jaywink cwebber2: oh yeah sorry :)
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cwebber2 jaywink: edited the comment
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jaywink well, AS2 itself isn't very interesting on it's own to a federated social site. AP is the real "magic sauce".
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cwebber2 it's good to have a common vocabulary :)
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cwebber2 that said, I'm sure someday someone will use AP with something like schema.org
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cwebber2 and that'll be interesting :)
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cwebber2 it's also been pointed out that it's possible to use microformats with AP if you use JF2's json-ld context :)
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cwebber2 reads https://macgirvin.com/channel/mike/&f=&mid=b66a33eab46047c3ebfaa1d0a9306856587a0880eff7445c724f92fef55e2d31@macgirvin.com?f=&jsdisabled=0
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Loqi [Mike Macgirvin] Operation Pub Crawl Mike Macgirvin Mike Macgirvin High...
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cwebber2 a bit worrying
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cwebber2 I hope we don't end up with broad inconsistencies in quasi-AP stuff because of this
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aaronpk huh, doesn't load for me
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aaronpk i just see some profile iinfo
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tOkeshu hello!
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tOkeshu I have a few questions regarding activitypub. The first one: it appears that sometimes the activities reference an object or an actor via the corresponding properties, but sometimes it is just an id (so a string) or the whole object. Is this expected?
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cwebber2 hi tOkeshu! welcome to #social
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cwebber2 tOkeshu: yup that's true and expected
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tOkeshu1 cwebber2: thanks. Is there any "good practice" to which form should be preferred when delivering activities? So far I assumed that the objects should be dereferenced anyway so I always produced short version (string ids) instead of whole objects
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tOkeshu1 but I realize that maybe some objects can't be dereferenced? what about private objects (like private toots for mastodon)
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cwebber2 tOkeshu1: well, should be verified... it's possible to deliver signed objects in theory also, but not everyone has converged on that
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cwebber2 tOkeshu1: you should definitely deliver the wrapped object in a Create, at least
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tOkeshu1 ok
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tOkeshu1 and then I guess, we authenticate the origin server with http signatures (I'm not there yet, I don't know how it does work)
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tOkeshu1 cwebber2: or would that be LD signatures?
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cwebber2 http signatures are easy
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cwebber2 and http signatures is its own spec
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cwebber2 linked data signatures are more complex, are a separate spec
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cwebber2 here's how it breaks down:
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cwebber2 want to sign the request (you know the actual http request came from the actor)?
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cwebber2 http signatures!
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cwebber2 want the signature to "attach" to the object and be carried around!
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cwebber2 ?
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cwebber2 linked data signatures
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cwebber2 however the latter is a bit more up in the air; not as many have implemented it yet
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tOkeshu1 ok thanks
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tOkeshu1 I have a use case in mind but can't quite grasp how one would do that with activitypub
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tOkeshu1 I would love to see a decentralised forum. A service easy to deploy but that doesn't need to create users (apart from the admin). I guess the workflow would be similar to a mailing list
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tOkeshu1 I already have a representation of myself as an actor, on mastodon.social, I would prefer to use that instead of creating another account on such service.
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tOkeshu1 How can I allow actors to publish messages on this forum? I guess that would be simply a post to the outbox of the forum, but then how do I authenticate the actor? would that be OAuth?
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tOkeshu1 I see there is a bit about foreign servers on the AP spec, would that be that?
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puckipedia tOkeshu1: so a mailing list setup would probably look like this:
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cwebber2 tOkeshu1: you mean, being able to log in and etc via the web interface?
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puckipedia set up server that hosts both a Group (with inbox/outbox), and an OrderedCollection
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tOkeshu1 cwebber2: I guess so. I mean I could use the mastodon web client, but then I suppose my followers would see my forum posts, which I don't necessary want.
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puckipedia the members are contained in the OrderedCollection.
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puckipedia so now you can do {type: Note, to: [theGroup, theGroup/members, public], content: "Hello"}
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puckipedia if you publish this, it won't be sent to your followers, but the members of the group will get the message
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cwebber2 an alternate way to do it is to have a thread be a top level post, and then use inReplyTo to construct all the replies in the chain
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cwebber2 and if you have a sub-forum type thing, that could be posted in the collection as puckipedia said
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cwebber2 oh maybe that even matches what puckipedia said :)
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puckipedia alternatively, make a hybrid Group/OrderedCollection (large hack!)
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puckipedia so you can @mention it from Mastodon, and it'll get pointed to both the group and the members? maybe?
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tOkeshu1 puckipedia, cwebber2: I see, that would be indeed a good way to do it. But then again, I need a specific UI to avoid posting the message to my followers, right?
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puckipedia tOkeshu1: Mastodon has 'unlisted' messages, which are public but not visible on the timeline, iirc?
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tOkeshu1 yes but followers see them
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cwebber2 it may be that mastodon doesn't expose all the addressing stuff you would want
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tOkeshu1 only direct messages are supposed to be "private" to the extent that a remote server has to respect this private characteristic
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tOkeshu1 cwebber2: well that's why I think a specific UI would be necessary for the forum, but then you need a way to be sure a particular client is the actor them claim to be
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puckipedia tOkeshu1: sooo if you really want to do something like this
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puckipedia hybrid actor/orderedcollection, containing the public collection?
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puckipedia it's a huge hack but it'd work with Mastodon lol
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tOkeshu1 puckipedia: ahah no, I would prefer a specific UI instead of doing everything via mastodon :)
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puckipedia so, this won't work with Mastodon, but if the server implements the ActivityPub client-to-server API
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puckipedia you could of course just ask the user to enter their user ID, then do OAuth, and send the proper formatted messages
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tOkeshu1 yep
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ajordan cwebber2: https://w3c.github.io/activitypub/#social-web-working-group#sotd "Status of this Document" says to send comments to public-socialweb@w3.org but like... people don't read that consistently? dunno if there's anything to be done about that but it would be nice if we *could*
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ajordan ben_thatmustbeme: ^^^ same problem for JF2
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ajordan and I guess for our other specs too
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cwebber2 ajordan: hm good point
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ajordan cwebber2: I guess that's boilerplate generated by Respec? is it actually required in W3C specs?
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cwebber2 ajordan: that may be auto-generated by respec yes
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cwebber2 ajordan: I don't know, though I don't think I have the time to figure out a fix
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ajordan cwebber2: maybe bring it up during a meeting?
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cwebber2 I guess... though I'm a bit nervous it'll waste a bunch of time
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cwebber2 esp since the mailing list was an enormous argument timesink
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cwebber2 that was before you got here :)
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cwebber2 veterans of #social can confirm ;)
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ajordan lol I'm sure
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ajordan we could timebox it
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cwebber2 ajordan: add it to the agenda, timeboxed @ 5min?
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ajordan yeah
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ajordan might take a bit longer, say 7m?
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cwebber2 here's how simple we could make it
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cwebber2 "is there a way to mark this as something else and is it allowed"L
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cwebber2 "yes? ok, how to do it. no? ok, nm"
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cwebber2 that's all we want/need
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ajordan that seems reasonable
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ajordan because I guess there's not much to be done if we can't change it, it's not like we have anything radically better
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ajordan uh. we have no meeting page for tomorrow? https://www.w3.org/wiki/Socialwg/2017-08-01 redlinks for me
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ajordan are we not meeting tomorrow?
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ben_thatmustbeme ajordan: i get those emails (i think)
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ajordan ben_thatmustbeme: yeah, I do too, but I don't think everyone in the WG does
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ajordan or if they get them they don't necessarily *see* them
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ben_thatmustbeme they do aside from those who specifically do not
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ajordan I certainly don't do a great job checking
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ajordan ah
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ajordan that helps
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