Chebucto Regional Softball Club

[@eeeee](/user/eeeee%40community.nodebb.org) a forum is _usually_ structured around a common theme, yes. For example, community.nodebb.org is centred around support/discussion for NodeBB. However, nothing stops someone from creating a _general-interest_ forum, and that's why I prefer to think of NodeBB _categories_ as like Lemmy communities. You are correct in that Mastodon does not have the concept of categories. In fact that have not much concept of organization of content outside of reply-trees, and that is partly by design and partly by the constraints from the microblogging style.

The upcoming possibility of browsing to remote federated categories/communities has me thinking about interesting use cases for it. Note that Lemmy, PieFed, mBin, and other "community-centric" software already do support this, so it's nothing new, I'm actually playing catch-up. One interesting use case centers around NodeBB's `/unread` route, which tracks new topics since your last visit. Since ever, and even now in v4, this is only for **local categories**, but if you're able to "subscribe" to a remote category, then we could enable use of this page for that content too. Think about waking up and seeing a self-curated feed of new content from your subscribed communities! There are some interesting parallels to RSS here, too. What other forum-centric use cases do you think would be enhanced by the ability to browse remote categories?

Hi [@andrew_s@piefed.social](https://community.nodebb.org/user/andrew_s%40piefed.social)/[@freamon](/user/freamon%40community.nodebb.org) and [@nutomic@lemmy.ml](https://community.nodebb.org/user/nutomic%40lemmy.ml) —I'm working (not-so-secretly) on refactoring NodeBB so that it is able to "browse" remote audiences/group actors, and that would include things like PieFed and Lemmy communities. *N.B. Given varied nomenclature (group/category/community/subforum), the ForumWG calls this structure an "audience".* Where I am at now is working through the logic for slotting an object into a category. The most obvious choice here would be to look at `as:audience`. It's even specified in 1b12, and the majority of threaded implementations follow 1b12. I am making this post because nutomic [explicitly removed the `audience` from being served in Lemmy](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/5315) (as of January this year), so I don't think relying on that property would be wise. I asked in that issue whether Lemmy finds community via `to/cc` (it does). Does PieFed do the same? Would this also open up the possibility of a topic/context being part of multiple audiences/communities? Interesting...

[@bh4-tech](https://community.nodebb.org/user/bh4-tech) might be not working because I did not expect urls. Can you try a handle like `dansup@mastodon.social`?

[@bh4-tech](https://community.nodebb.org/user/bh4-tech) can you supply the URLs you tried to follow please?

[@eeeee](/user/eeeee%40community.nodebb.org) there's no difference in follows if you're admin vs non-admin.

[@eeeee](/user/eeeee%40community.nodebb.org) follows do need to be accepted, although it's configurable. Most software auto accepts, but delays in messaging mean sometimes the requests or responses get lost. Cancel that follow and try again, and it might be accepted. You see the settings cog because you're an admin on your instance.

[@eeeee](/user/eeeee%40community.nodebb.org) You wait for me to overhaul the entire `/world`/category UX so that you can "browse" to [@medicine@mander.xyz](https://community.nodebb.org/user/medicine%40mander.xyz) from your NodeBB itself.

[@eeeee](/user/eeeee%40community.nodebb.org) it is likely due to `audience`. So, what happens on your end is you make a topic and mention the Lemmy community. When NodeBB federates that post out, the Lemmy community is included in the mentions, but it also specifies your category 18, World Chat, in `audience`. If Lemmy sees that, and it doesn't know about that community already, it will drop the activity immediately. If it _does_, then it will likely slot the post into the "World Chat on isurg.com" community on that Lemmy instance. Lemmy removed `audience` checking, so this might be a non-issue. Once that Lemmy instance updates to the latest version, it'll hopefully post to the correct community. That's a tricky one, though, because which community _should_ it post to? * "Medicine" on mander.xyz, or * "World Chat" on isurg.com?

[@reiver@mastodon.social](https://community.nodebb.org/user/reiver%40mastodon.social) no, I am not, I have just been following the `fediversehouse` hashtag

[@hamishcampbell@mastodon.social](https://community.nodebb.org/user/hamishcampbell%40mastodon.social) recently made a statement that got me thinking about our place in the open social web, and the direction it's going. He says to [@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org](https://community.nodebb.org/user/deadsuperhero%40social.wedistribute.org) and [@evan@cosocial.ca](https://community.nodebb.org/user/evan%40cosocial.ca) re: SXSW > #FediverseHouse this feels like an irrelevant echo chamber, I really miss the grassroots #DIY that built this space in the first place. This #maistreaming is too much noise vs signal... currently the grassroots #DIY space is a hollow shell _(two posts combined)_ That immediately got me on edge as someone new to ActivityPub in 2024. Does this mean I'm "mainstream", and somehow "bad"? Mainstream adoption is **good** and a step in the right direction. I personally think ActivityPub isn't ready for general mainstream consumption, but we as a group are rapidly closing the gap and I'd much rather continue building momentum instead of waiting for the opportune moment. Here's the hot take that I was going to originally write, but thought came off as too combative: > It sounds like you feel like ActivityPub development only counts when you're toiling away in obscurity. As someone who's hacking away on a platform that hasn't been "mainstream" for over a decade (forum/BBS software), I bristle at the notion that what I do doesn't count as grassroots or DIY. You don't have to be the perpetual underdog to do good in the world. I might be wrong, but it sounds like Hamish feels like big players are coming in and taking the ball away... that big players' clout and presence takes away from the attention that smaller DIY projects receive. Maybe... but if the fediverse is 100x larger with a big player, and they take 99% of the eyeballs, have they really taken anything away from you?

[@Kichae](/user/kichae%40community.nodebb.org) said in [Organizing the many worlds you're part of through NodeBB](https://community.nodebb.org/post/103739): > But man, do I ever desperately want the bulletin board experience in /world. It really feels like what the fediverse was always meant to be, to me. I've been inspired by some teaser images from [@johnonolan@mastodon.xyz](https://community.nodebb.org/user/johnonolan%40mastodon.xyz)'s Ghost blog, which physically segregates microblogging content apart from long-form content (e.g. blogs). Forum topics fit somewhere in the middle, although since title and body are present we tend to align more with long-form content. It's a really neat idea I'd like to play around with more.

[@johnonolan@mastodon.xyz](https://community.nodebb.org/user/johnonolan%40mastodon.xyz) no worries, and thanks! Will do.

I post stuff to the _Uncategorized_ category all the time, and it works decently well but suffers from a negative association by default. Posting something to "uncategorized" seems slightly wrong, and I'm not sure whether it's nomenclatural or something else. A much better UX flow would be for you to post directly to a remote category. 🤯

To that end, being able to browse additional forums from the comfort (and theme) of your own forum is quite desirable. It would be really interesting to see this play out with Lemmy communities and other forums focused on one specific topic.

[@malte@forum.fedi.dk](https://community.nodebb.org/user/malte%40forum.fedi.dk) lots to unpack here. I'll try my best. You certainly can use NodeBB as your main gateway to the fediverse. I do, with this account. I will admit that more "power user" features are not well represented yet. The idea that there are disparate categories that ought to be visible/followable is an important one to implement, but also to get right. Right now when you follow a category, it's represented as a user on NodeBB. That's just the way it was done, but as I sit with that decision daily I'm coming to the realization that that's not the ideal way to represent it. It is almost certainly my next focus for NodeBB.

[@frankm@linux-nerds.org](https://community.nodebb.org/user/frankm%40linux-nerds.org) this is now done. Turns out I wasn't actually stopping a category from following a user, so that didn't need rolling back. https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/issues/13232 [@hamiller@forum.wedistribute.org](https://community.nodebb.org/user/hamiller%40forum.wedistribute.org) using a hashtag is probably also something I should allow categories to follow, although that's local-only to the instance because of how hashtags work. Either way I didn't want to restrict a valid use case

[@frankm@linux-nerds.org](https://community.nodebb.org/user/frankm%40linux-nerds.org) the reason why I'm hesitant about this is because allowing a category to follow a user bakes in the assumption that _everything the user posts is relevant_. If you're following something like the linux foundation that's a pretty safe bet for a Linux category, but what if you follow a user and they start sharing or posting about unrelated things, like what they had for breakfast, etc.? That's where things could get messy. ---- **But**, I absolutely love the idea of creating a category and making it sort of like a curated channel based around one idea. This is the kind of cool stuff I want to see!

[@CWSmith](https://community.nodebb.org/user/cwsmith) not _right now_, no. A category can only follow other accounts that identify themselves as "Group". This is to take advantage of synchronization logic that regular users don't supply (and even then not all groups do either). However I'll keep this workflow in mind, it's an interesting idea!

[@johnonolan@mastodon.xyz](https://community.nodebb.org/user/johnonolan%40mastodon.xyz) A solution is only needed if the resource id is different from the URL (which in Ghost's case, is true). You don't _have_ to use a redirect. If your software is capable of doing it, you can serve the ActivityPub object directly from that route's controller; that's what NodeBB does.