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In my ever-continuing use of NodeBB as a single-user Fediverse instance, here are some things I've noticed. Both things I've already talked about before, and some new things. These are some suggestions for functionality or perhaps plugins.

1. Confusion between following remote categories as a user and the synchronization options in category settings as an admin. I think the category synchronization should be repurposed somewhat. The suggestion from @[email protected] was to perhaps rework it as a cross-posting feature.

   • Right now, the feature relies on the other ActivityPub endpoint to be able to follow the NodeBB category, which (notably Lemmy) does not always work.
   • Making a "proxy user" is a pretty common solution to this, used by Misskey etc. One single system proxy user can follow all remote categories, and then NodeBB itself can handle the synchronization.

2. Lack of posts. This is a general problem for single-user instances, and it's why things like relays and Fedifetcher exist. Support for relays would help a lot, but a Fedifetcher-like plugin/function would be even better.

   • Fedifetcher works by loading posts from the source server, and finding all the replies there. It then executes a search against your own server, which fofrces your server to load the reply. This should work just fine for NodeBB, because searching post links causes the posts to load.
   • But Fedifetcher relies on platform-specific APIs (Mastodon, Misskey, etc). So I think this would be a good candidate for a NodeBB plugin.

3. Slotting posts and topics into local categories. To me, this feels like the holy grail of integrating the traditional forum experience into the Fediverse. It's something I've brought up before, and someone was working on a plugin, but I'm not sure it ever got finished.

   • It would be amazing to add a function in the admin settings under category settings to make a list of remote ActivityPub actors that get posts slotted into the category automatically.
   • Any incoming note from that actor will be automatically put into the specified category.
   • This shouldn't need to rely on altering or updating any synchronization stuff, because it can work with any incoming post. The framework for receiving remote posts is already there.

These are all just ideas, and maybe some discussion can be had on them before I start embarking on a path of attempting to make some NodeBB plugins .

After restarting NodeBB, I can load the category, though. Maybe some deadlock on initial import of the community.

How would this work on the NodeBB side? Multiple categories associated with one topic?

I'm seeing issues with loading remote categories. I can't load the NodeBB bug reports category at all, and for the ActivityPub category, I can find it in my world category search, but I get a 404 when trying to load it. Also can't load [email protected] for example.

It seems the NodeBB development board is the only one really federating for me. Any way I can solve this?

I am running beta2 of 4.3.0.

When a post with a link on it federates, it seems NodeBB doesn't capture the link. Is that true? Or is it hiding the link somewhere? I always have to go to the original post to find the link?

@[email protected] said in NodeBB v4.0.0 - Categories not following group actors:

@[email protected] Adding UI for settings today. Will put on github once that's done (though I can share the core snippet in a bit). It can also work for auto-moving local tagged posts as well.

Should also mention that not every post from remote actors is tagged, so it might not catch everything. Could possibly have it just read any uncategorized posts and move based on users instead? Might be a better workaround for core, but if you have any thoughts let me know @[email protected]

Sounds good. Looking forward to trying it out. If there's a way to tie the post back to a Group Actor "user" (which are the local NodeBB users that share/boost the content within NodeBB), then you could probably make the algorithm more reliable. I don't know anything about the internals of NodeBB, though. Just spitballing ideas.

@[email protected] said in NodeBB v4.0.0 - Categories not following group actors:

@[email protected] sounds good! I'm actually re-assigning the category before creation, rather than using the helpers in TopicTools, but I'll make the issue in case that should result in the same behavior

I'm very eager to try this plugin lol. Have you put it up on GitHub somewhere yet?

I've just installed a new instance of NodeBB and it works beautifully. Some questions:

1. Is it possible for categories to follow Lemmy communities in their sync settings? I seem to be able to follow Lemmy communities, but the categories are stuck on pending.
2. Same for NodeBB categories. Can I sync my own category with remote NodeBB categories?

Edit: the URLs stuck on pending are giving "invalid-id" errors in the log. As in invalid activitypub ids. I pasted the URLs of some Lemmy communities and NodeBB categories.

Edit 2: Found the topic about this. https://community.nodebb.org/post/102818

@[email protected] it looks pretty nice! Suggestions would be to have the ability to jump to the post via a button (if not already present). And maybe a user setting to expand or collapse these by default.

@[email protected] said in NodeBB v4.0.0 — Federate good times, come on!:

@[email protected] careful with that though, not all tags are the same, some have a higher signal-to-noise ratio, but others would just be filled with garbage

I think the best way, then, would be to have rules that map various group actor URLs to categories, and possibly also tags. Nothing automatic. Only configured. Of course, once Lemmy fixes the ability of Group actors to follow other Group actors, this will be a non-issue.

One other possible solution, which is employed by Misskey et al., is a proxy actor. It's a special user that follows other users, and relays info within its own instance. It's used for doing things like adding a remote user to a list without directly following them. The proxy account follows the user, and then your local instance adds the remote user to your list. But all ActivityPub interactions go through the proxy user.