julian

https://community.nodebb.org/user/julian

Hi! I'm Julian, one of the co-founders of NodeBB, the forum software you are using right now.

I started this company with two colleagues, Baris and Andrew, in 2013, and have been doing the startup thing since (although I think at some point along the way we stopped being a startup and just became a boring ol' small business).

In my free time I rock climb, cycle, and lift weights. I live just outside Toronto, Canada, with my wife and three children.

Public Key

npub1uq5lznmk9ax9r07mhs0lrv4qaafyguepj2spfjlw54acwkxrds3sppz8a5

NIP-05 Address

julian_at_community.nodebb.org@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqswq203famz7nz3hldmc8l3k2sw75jywvse9gq5e0h227u8trpkcgch2np4s

Author Public Key

npub1uq5lznmk9ax9r07mhs0lrv4qaafyguepj2spfjlw54acwkxrds3sppz8a5

Show more details

Last Notes

2024-06-27 04:30:00

Tonight I set aside some time to listen to @npub1d2v…0l89 on @npub17fe…w0a6's DotSocial podcast.
A lot *a lot* **a lot** of what John says mirrors the very same potential that many ActivityPub devs see as well. There are far too many points in that podcast that made me nod my head in agreement (and wish I was a third guest too!), but there was one that was incredibly timely:
>
> **Mike**> : ... you've been thinking about actually embedding the whole article in the ActivityPub post, which is a mind-blowing thing... it's not a link to something else... the whole article is in the post.
>
> **John**> : Yes, this is something that makes perfect sense but is somehow completely new, which is weird...
>
> **Mike**> : You can have formatted text... images? video?
>
> **John**> : ActivityPub is fairly agnostic, you could in theory shove almost anything into it. The question is what is the client on the other side prepared to receive? Do they have some way to display it?
>
> **John**> : > ***If we get platforms in the ActivityPub network to start innovating with content types, it might cause those things to be adopted and it might drive the standard and what it is possible to display***
>
Emphasis mine.
John, Mike, this is *almost word-for-word exactly* what the Forum and Threaded Discussions working group has been working towards! The main problem is we need buy-in from implementers to push this forward.
We can do this, we can send richer HTML across the protocol in such a way that all those things you two mentioned — in-line images, embedded videos, tables, etc. — can all show up as intended by the sender.
We've got commitment from (but not limited to) representatives from NodeBB, Discourse, and WordPress, and having Ghost and Flipboard sign on would help push this forward just that much more.
Let's do this, let me get you caught up with the state of the protocol re: the Article object type. Let's chat (but publicly, since I can't receive DMs here on NodeBB).

2024-06-21 14:30:47

<li>This is a list</li>
Some text
<li>This is another list item
<ul>
<li>Oddly</li>
<li>test</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>A third list item
<ul>
<li>hmm
<ul>
<li>what</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>

2024-06-12 15:22:25

- reply

just waiting for someone to totally abuse this by shoving all previous replies in the chain into inReplyTo
After all, the protocol doesn't forbid it, no? Haha

2024-06-10 19:40:51

Sometimes when NodeBB attempts to retrieve a remote user, it will encounter the HTTP status code 410 Gone, which I take to mean that the user has been deleted from the origin server.
I mostly see it from spam accounts that were deleted, but I could potentially see that returned if users manually delete their own accounts.
The easy way forward here would be to see this and immediately delete all content I have locally for that user... all posts we have cached, the local profile, etc.
Downside is it could mean good conversations could suddenly have a hole in them when the account is deleted. We actually circumvent this in NodeBB by not allowing the user to one-click purge all of their content; an administrator is usually involved in the process.
But as always, different implementers might mean different things with 410 Gone, so I hesitate and wonder whether the simple path is the right path...

2024-06-10 19:13:06

- reply

The other users on this NodeBB do not typically interact with fedi content, but that's because it's still under development and not heavily marketed.
Plus there's that whole "what is the fediverse" thing we have to figure out how to teach, heh.

2024-06-10 17:44:47

- reply

that's because you're using AI as a tool, and doing so transparently.
There's merit in AI generated art, sure. I do think some might find issues if you created something with AI and then claimed it as *entirely* your own effort

2024-05-21 15:28:53

We've noticed in the past week that fairly innocuous looking posts are coming in from brand-new users **containing spam links with no anchor text**. They're caught by the post queue but at face value, they could be accepted by a moderator as the link themselves were hidden from view.
It was only once you inspected the raw post content that the hidden link was revealed (e.g. innocuous text [](//malicious.org).
To combat this, NodeBB will now explicitly expose hidden links so that they can be easily seen and caught.
This is what it looks like: [](https://community.nodebb.org//community.nodebb.org )
If you are viewing this post from outside of NodeBB, you might not see anything! That means your software might be vulnerable to this kind of spam backlink injection. Best case, your software detects the empty link text and removes it completely. Worst case, you're allowing them in unknowingly.
Last thing, it's possible this has been around for ages and I only just noticed (thanks also to @npub1hxp…n4ux for pointing out the hidden links from an earlier post!) If you browse around the forum and see some of these hidden links scattered around some posts, flag it immediately so we can take a look.
Thank you!

2024-05-21 04:09:27

Sometimes we get spam. It's *always* caught by our post queue because we're a relatively small community and new registrants always get their submissions queued for approval.
Almost always it's obvious. Either it's just a plain ad, or tons of word salad... more recently it's AI generated crap which all sounds the same.
This week we're starting to see posts come on with innocuous content, like "me too" posts with slightly more content. What did surprise me was that they contained hidden links. Up until now I was seeing actual text hyperlinked, so they turned blue. With no actual anchor text, the anchor still exists, but is just invisible.
So I think a good next step here is replacing all links with empty anchors with a bright red hidden link element.

2024-05-16 20:53:35

At the last ForumWG meeting, [we discussed at length about Article vs. Note](https://community.nodebb.org/post/99385 ), and whether there was a desire to expand usage of as:Article. [You can review those minutes here](https://community.nodebb.org/topic/18012/minutes-from-2-may-2024-wg-meeting ).
One of the action items that came out was to collate the state of current implementations. Unfortunately, outside of implementations that federate non-textual content (e.g. Pixelfed Stories, Mobilizon Events, etc.), the majority of implementors just use as:Note, which is not surprising given Mastodon's treatment of non-Note objects.
You can see [the results of the summary here](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aWTLOEdNRkyxSccNFAuiCnITjJEbaUltcdJscmL-JHM/edit?usp=sharing ).
What is less clear is whether there is pent-up demand for use of a different data type for more richly forrmatted content. @npub1k90…q43y and @npub1scy…khe4 provided some very illuminating history behind previous attempts to use as:Article, but importantly it seems that Mastodon (via @npub1zu5…pytj) may be open to supporting this in some form as well.
While Mastodon has every reason to display as:Note as it sees fit, I'd like to hopefully address the undue influence towards using it especially in instances where as:Article were more appropriate. Mike (upthread) suggested a compromise:
<li>that <code>as:Note</code> be reserved for content with attachments (images or otherwise), perhaps with a limited subset of html</li>
<li>and <code>as:Article</code> be used for content with a richer set of html (e.g. tables), and including the ability to display inline images</li>
I explicitly did not specify that Note was for shorter content and Article for longer, because there exist plenty of examples of the reverse.
Does anybody see potential complications from such an arrangement?

2024-05-16 19:47:59

[My post from a couple weeks back](https://community.nodebb.org/post/99512 ) indicated that NodeBB started following part of [FEP-7888: Demystifying the context property](https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/7888/fep-7888.md ).
Our implementation is an endorsement of @npub1t5c…ppw4's proposal that the context property be given additional formalization.
During the last ForumWG call, they intentionally (or perhaps unintentionally) summarized their desire that implementors should "just use collections", and that that would be a good starting point for future iteration.
With the current state of context being "there is no coordinated usage of context", this topic aims to provide a snapshot of implementors' use of that property (or lack thereof), and to stimulate further discussion on potential use cases.
Note that this is not the first time the question has been raised. trwnh's discussion topic [contained one such summary of current implementations](https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/fep-7888-demystifying-the-context-property/3021/6?u=devnull ).
As per that topic:
<li>Mastodon — does not use <code>context</code>, but provides an <code>ostatus:conversation</code> property</li>
<li>Pleroma/Akkoma — uses <code>context</code>, but the url provided is unresolvable, likely used similarly to Mastodon</li>
<li>Streams (<a class="plugin-mentions-user plugin-mentions-a" href="https://fediversity.site/channel/mikedev">@mikedev@fediversity.site</a>) — uses <code>context</code>, resolves to an <code>OrderedCollection</code> containing all activities encontered (Creates, Updates, etc.)</li>
My hope is that a provided context resolving to a Collection (or subtype thereof) would allow for proactive topic backfill, instead of relying on [reply chain traversal](https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/traversing-the-reply-chain-when-working-with-topics/4187/1 ), which while workable, has some rather specific downsides.
As mentioned per the above linked announcement that NodeBB was following FEP-7888:
<li>We attach <code>context</code> to all <code>Note</code> objects (NodeBB posts), and it resolves to an <code>OrderedCollection</code> that contains the uris to the other objects in the context (the NodeBB topic).</li>

2024-05-14 17:35:04

- reply

said in [@julian hey, how does NodeBB federate things like categories with posts?](https://community.nodebb.org/post/https%3A%2F%2Fmastodon.social%2Fusers%2Ftrwnh%2Fstatuses%2F112440492690696428 ):
>
> a third way would be to define an extension property/collection indicating "members" that you can Join/Leave or be Add/Remove to by mods.
>
Pardon my ignorance, but isn't this exactly what streams is for?
>
> **streams**
>
A list of supplementary Collections which may be of interest.
>
Granted it's only mentioned in the context of an Actor object.

2024-05-14 16:35:04

- reply

Current implementations of ActivityPub are passive. You follow people, content comes in, and you build a context around it based on what you already know.
The long view here is that an active means of content discovery should be possible, and the first step to doing that is maintaining a both a context and audience at the object level, but also to have higher-level collections be backreferenceable to those same objects.
audience being a Group and not an OrderedCollection potentially makes this problematic, but... one problem at a time. Maybe this is where the streams property could work, who knows.
@npub1ecs…u4wq @npub1t5c…ppw4

2024-05-14 16:30:02

- reply

Ah, yes, Notes also do contain that information.
The earlier post I made contains context (the topic OrderedCollection), and audience (the containing category). Here's a subset of that object json:
<code>{
"id":"https://community.nodebb.org/post/99688",
"type":"Note",
"to":[...],
"cc":[...],
"inReplyTo":"https://hachyderm.io/users/thisismissem/statuses/112440197848097443",
"published":"2024-05-14T15:44:53.375Z",
"url":"https://community.nodebb.org/post/99688",
"attributedTo":"https://community.nodebb.org/uid/2",
"context":"https://community.nodebb.org/topic/2d35681b-8aee-42f2-9edc-cfc145cf294e",
"audience":"https://community.nodebb.org/category/-1",
"sensitive":false,
"summary":null,
"name":null,
"content":"...",
}
</code>
audience is mentioned in FEP-1b12 (@npub17g6…xrv5), and context is mentioned in FEP-7888 (@npub1t5c…ppw4)

2024-05-14 15:44:53

- reply

still being worked on and liable to change, but right now a category/audience is on the fediverse as a Group actor and announces all posts made to topics within it, as per FEP-1b12
Topics/contexts are currently not sent out to inboxes, but when queried, return an OrderedCollection.

2024-05-11 17:29:09

- reply

theoretically a Q&A site *would* bundle in answers, so we'd send anyOf or oneOf too!
@npub1xse…lgk3 @npub1ecs…u4wq

2024-05-11 15:05:30

- reply

yep, we've been working on federation this year.
We're watching the implosion of StackOverflow with interest and would help facilitate a federated alternative if there is interest.

2024-05-11 00:23:58

@npub1t5c…ppw4 I think I figured out why those posts of yours from way back didn't federate in.
Your identity to the NodeBB forum had 0 rep, so you were limited to one post every 300 seconds.
I've removed that limitation for now.

2024-05-10 04:38:38

- reply

I can't believe it actually worked!
https://community.nodebb.org/post/99626

2024-04-27 03:00:10

There have been some scattered discussions I've seen over the past year that mention that [@pfefferle@mastodon.social](https://mastodon.social/@pfefferle)'s WordPress ActivityPub plugin federates their blog posts out as an as:Note, and that the only reason this is done is because Mastodon only treats as:Note (and as:Question) as a first-class object and relegates anything else to a fallback handler that takes a short snippet of the content, and shows a link back to the original source, thus losing any in-app benefits (boosts, replies, etc.)
Whether this is actually true or not, I do not know. So that's why I'd like to ask Mattias — or anybody else with some context — here.
For reference:
<li><code>as:Article</code>: Represents any kind of multi-paragraph written work.</li>
<li><code>as:Note</code>: Represents a short written work typically less than a single paragraph in length.</li>
<li><code>as:Page</code>: Represents a Web Page.</li>
I have also noticed that Lemmy, perhaps out of principle, sends out an as:Page for new generated content, and only the *replies* federate out as as:Note. It has unfortunately led to some assertions that Lemmy's federation is "broken", even though it is arguably *not* the case.
[@nutomic@socialhub.activitypub.rocks](https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/u/nutomic), care to weigh in?
I don't even blame Mattias for opting to send everything out as as:Note.
End of the day **right now** it doesn't matter how Mattias or Nutomic represent their higher-level collection of data, because Mastodon is the largest implementor and neither they — *nor anyone else I know of, for that matter* — treat anything that's *not* as:Note or as:Question specially.
But that ought to change. The question is **how**, but this WG is not at the point where we start throwing around decrees and making up standards.
What's important to me right now is what the landscape looks like right now, and why that is the case.
N.B. The discussion here will eventually make its way to online real-time discussion at one of the future WG meetings.