Related to the ForumWG topic of resolvable context collections, there are four FEPs that are currently in consideration:
- FEP-7888: Demystifying the context property
- FEP-400e: Publicly-appendable ActivityPub collections
- Draft FEP-171b: Conversation Containers, an evolution of Conversation Containers
- FEP-76ea: Conversation Threads
@[email protected] made a suggestion last month to hopefully reduce the number of moving parts:
- Both FEP-400e and FEP-1b12 implementations: support FEP-7888 (context collection)
- FEP-400e implementations: upgrade to Conversation Containers
- FEP-1b12 implementations: add target property to Announce activity that points to context collection.
This takes FEP 400e out of the running (potentially). But the day after that last meeting, @[email protected] put together FEP 76ea, and now we’re back to three.
My concern is that all three FEPs (7888, 171b, and 76ea) all share these distinct qualities:
- They establish a conversational context for a given object
- They federate out an
Addon collection addition. (76ea also sendsRemove) - They contain some concept of a context owner (
attributedTo)
They differ on the following qualities:
- 7888/171b use
contextwhereas 76ea uses a new propertythr:thread - 171b specifies a new object type
Context - Collection items:
- 7888 sends objects in chronological order
- 171b sends activities in chronological order
- 76ea sends objects in reverse chronological order
In the lead up to the November WG meeting I’d like to address those differences. All three FEPs are in pre-draft or draft stages, and so I am hoping we can find some common ground and compromise.
Pinging interested parties (who were not already mentioned above) for comment:
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]
@julian @silverpill @evan @trwnh @erincandescent @mikedev
I continue to feel that this general idea is in keeping with the as-written intent of the context property. Adding a new property is likely to make adoption slower and more complicated. Adding a new object type is also likely to make adoption slower and more complicated, but less so than the property. Either of those option only really makes sense to disambiguate from existing uses, of which there is very little.
@julian @silverpill @evan @trwnh @erincandescent @mikedev
As a side note, it’s beyond frustrating that the original goal of this topic was to accomplish reply-limiting controls. But, a year and a half later, we’re still bike shedding data types and haven’t even gotten to the point of talking about an actual behavioral protocol for proposing, accepting, rejecting, and verifying the addition of an object to a relevant collection.