March 2025 ForumWG Minutes

Apologies in advance if I misrepresented anybody or missed any crucial bits of information.

• Julian provided a brief summary of the state of conversational contexts
  • two-pronged approach: top down (feps), bottom up (implementors)
  • IceShrimp.NET (waiting and watching)
    • Already exposes context collections, integration testing pending
  • Mitra
    • Implemented (top-level only) context collections of objects, tested and working
• Julian said 7888 is object-based contexts, 171b is activity-based contexts and notes that activity-based context can be more comprehensive (incl. likes, reactions, updates)
• a (@trwnh@mastodon.social) notes that 7888 is more generic and doesn't specify object-vs-activity; notes there is also a missing link between an object and its Create act

Agenda preparation for the February ForumWG meeting can be found at this public link (anyone can make comments for review.)

Monthly meetings are held on the first Thursday of each month, at 13h00 to 14h00 Eastern Time (currently 18h00 to 19h00 UTC). You can find them listed in the SocialCG Calendar. The next meeting will be held on 6 March 2025.

We will be discussing:

• Housekeeping
  • Daylight savings time Monday, ForumWG meetings track Eastern Time
  • EST ⇒ EDT (lose one hour)
• Update — State of Conversational Contexts (Julian)
  • https://community.nodebb.org/topic/18647/the-state-of-conversational-contexts-february-2025
  • IceShrimp.NET (waiting and watching)
    • Already exposes context collections, integration testing pending
  • Mitra
    • Implemented top-level context collections of objects, int

A conversational context is what the ForumWG uses to describe what you might see as a reply tree or comment thread. One of the short-to-medium term goals of the ForumWG is to get conversational backfill working reliably.

What this means — conversational backfill means that when you encounter a post/status/note/etc. (e.g. you're mentioned or boosted/shared something), there is a reliable and comprehensive way to retrieve the entire conversation around it, so you are not interacting with the object on its own, but in its proper context with all its sibling replies.

We plan to achieve this with a combination of a top-down (FEP-driven) and bottom-up (implementor-first) approach. While this sounds incongruent, top-down approaches tend to overcomplicate and bottom-up approaches tend to violate the protocol (unintentionally of course :joy:.)

There are a number of independent top-down efforts to achieve this:

• [FEP-7888: Demystifying the context property](https://community.nodebb.

Just wrapped up a call with @pfefferle@mastodon.social and @jesseplusplus@mastodon.social to review their implementations of FEP 7888, specifically in relation to conversational backfill.

:heavy_check_mark: individual objects serve a context property :heavy_check_mark: that context property is a URL that resolves

One of the concerns raised was related to the OrderedCollection of items served by the context. Specifically, if the items presented in the collection were not in chronological order, NodeBB failed at importing some of the items as the inReplyTo referenced an object that did not exist.

The solution to this was to ensure that the collection items were in chronological order from oldest to newest. Once fixed:

:heavy_check_mark: the context resolved to an OrderedCollection containing objects :heavy_check_mark: NodeBB was able to pull in

The full minutes from the Forum and Threaded Discussions Task Force monthly meeting (held on 13 February) can be found at this Google Docs link

Apologies in advance if I misrepresented anybody or missed any crucial bits of information.

February 2025 Minutes

• The meeting was deferred a week due to Julian being out of the country, but this time conflicted with the Geosocial TF and perhaps it would be easier to just skip the month instead.
• Julian attempted developer outreach in the weeks leading up to FOSDEM (and at FOSDEM), specifically relating to FEP 7888 and resolvable contexts.
  • Much of the feedback revolved around the perceived complexity of the FEP
  • A separate attempt to focus more on outcomes (e.g. conversational backfill via 7888) led to more positive feedback
• This led to the desire to modify FEP 7888 away from being a (perceived) monolithic FEP into a

Agenda preparation for the February ForumWG meeting can be found at this public link (anyone can make comments for review.)

Monthly meetings normally are held on the first Thursday of each month, at 1700 to 1800 UTC. You can find them listed in the SocialCG Calendar. The next meeting will be held on 13 February 2025 due to my being out of the country last week.

We will be discussing:

• Long-form text and resolvable context updates from FOSDEM
• Concerns regarding developer accessibility of FEP 7888
• Live brainstorm/whiteboarding session re: long-term focus of threaded conversation FEPs

As always — time permitting — if you'd like to speak or inquire about a certain topic, comment in the agenda or reply here, the floor is open!

Hello all,

Just a quick note that the Forum and Threaded Discussions Task Force meeting is delayed one week as I am out of the country currently, returning Monday.

There will not be a ForumWG meeting today due to the holidays being a rather slow period for development.

We'll be back in February for a post-FOSDEM meetup!