I gave my initial thoughts here but I thought it worth boiling down to a few features I (possibly selfishly) would like to see:
- Lemmy login (and other Threadiverse devices like Mbin/Kbin and perhaps PieFed but the lack of an API may be an issue) - you can already use your login from a number of other Fediverse services.
- Import IMDb lists - you can import Letterboxd ones.
As both features are already running in NeoDB (just for other websites) it should lower the bar for these changes, compared with starting from scratch.
Anything else people want to see?
So I spoke to the developer and of a Lemmy login, they said
great question. my thought is no but also yes.
The current login via (Mastodon|Bluesky|Threads) is for users who want to add their review to their existing microblogging feed, but Lemmy is not primarily for microblogging.
However, I do think it’s valid use case to post a book review to a forum and interact with members of that forum. This does not require login via Lemmy, but instead can be achieved by adding Group feature to NeoDB and make its federation compatible with Lemmy.
When given a further nudge, they responded
thanks, I’ll think about it. neither is trivial efforts, will probably take a while.
Also regarding web fiction like featured in [email protected]
Web fiction is an interesting topic by itself, there are currently some debate among NeoDB.social users about if/how that should be managed in the catalog.
Interesting!!
They have a point about the microblogging feed thing … but I’d question how essential that is as a feature. I imagine many might prefer to leave things on the neoDB instance?? (Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if this touches on the general topic of how federation isn’t everything in decentralised social media)
So logging in with an account then is about convenience (which is arguably something decentralisation can be more about!).
What’s more, from what I can tell, the neoDB account is linked to but still separate from the original fediverse account, meaning that someone can follow the neoDB account specifically for neoDB content … which is arguably a nicer way of doing things and could be available for all lemmy users.
Adding the group feature is interesting too!
My understanding is that bookwyrm kinda do that already ???
So I’d guess each item (book, film etc) would be a group and all reviews posts and all commentary ordinary comments??
Or … cross posting from neoDB, instead of being just to mastodon etc, could be to a specified group/community, which seems like an easier lift for neoDB, as then it wouldn’t need to implement a full group feature, but instead federate out a group-based post and be prepared to receive the “replies” to that post as comments much the same way it already does but compatible with the group-based threadiverse platforms like lemmy.
Combined with lemmy login and you’d be cooking!
So I actually haven’t signed into one with my masto account (yet) … I saw the permissions it was taking and got a little concerned that it was taking write permissions over my account, specifically posts and media … not knowing enough about it I noped out until I could clarify what’s going on.
Do you know what that’s about? Naively it seems unnecessary … but is the idea that I can post on a neoDB instance and have that post appear as though it’s from my mastodon account?
Essentially yes.
I have a test account on neodb.social.
If i add a film as Watched or To Watch, etc it offers “crosspost to timeline”:
You can then see it posted to my linked Mastodon account.
As you can see, it’s possible to uncheck this so it doesn’t do that - it’d probably get annoying if you added a lot.
I wondered what that did. I wouldn’t use it - just follow my neodb account if you want to see that stuff. Same as Bookwyrm - if you want to see what I’m reading, follow that account.
Actually some link between Bookwyrm and NeoDB would be good. I’d rather keep my books on Bookwyrm, but if it could be synced to NeoDB that would be cool.
With that in mind, if it looked to Bookwyrm like a Bookwyrm instance (as far as the books bit is concerned), that would be amazing.
Yea nice. Thanks!
Seems like there should be a setting for the preferable default.
I cant find a ton on anime, manga and manhwa titles on neodb. Can you connect to mangaupdates, anidb and myanimelist (MAL) for easy import?
I’ve just seen that it will import from BGG (board games) if you provide a BGG URL! With that in mind, some sort of sync of plays might be good. NeoDB doesn’t particularly look like it will handle that very well.
