@eyeinthesky I am genuinely curious. What do you mean by a "real" schema language? What criteria should it meet?

More specifically, what would constitute successful interoperability for #ActivityPub in line with the aims of #SocialWeb?

#JSONLD is not a schema language. It is used to serialise #ActivityStreams as the primary vocab for exchanging social activities, providing a foundation, and leaves room for extensibility for broad human needs to express social matters.

@eyeinthesky I am genuinely curious. What do you mean by a "real" schema language? What criteria should it meet?

More specifically, what would constitute successful interoperability for #ActivityPub in line with the aims of #SocialWeb?

#JSONLD is not a schema language. It is used to serialise #ActivityStreams as the primary vocab for exchanging social activities, providing a foundation, and leaves room for extensibility for broad human needs to express social matters.

@Varpie @box464 @ivan

Yes. Depending on what you want I'd follow a more design-first approach of the particular domain you want to model. And not shy away from custom types, or better, an existing domain-specific vocab.

On the fediverse there's this urge to try to cram and map any functionality on the poor #ActivityStreams vocabulary, which only has a small number of 'social networking primitives' to work with. The use case section in the spec at par. 5.8.12 states that Offer involves "offering one object to another" which is a very low-level technical ability, more indicating of a protocol capability than for general use as "business domain".

https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/#motivations

In your last scenario "Bidding" seems to indicate the business domain / bounded context, part of perhaps a larger eCommerce toplevel domain. You might use https://eventmodeling.org

Also: who is the actor? You may have an Offer service, and "OfferService announces Alice's offer".

Interesting too: https://offerbots.org/the-problem/

@steve @jerger @mariusor @HolosSocial

An interesting document that was created for #ActivityStreams primer details "motivating use cases" for the specification, and these are categorized by domain.

https://www.w3.org/wiki/Activity_Streams/Primer/Motivating_Use_Cases

The primer also uses "domain" as terminology, and in Extensibility page reads:

> Activity Streams 2.0 extensions aren't self-explanatory or self-executing. It takes documentation and software to turn a pet-adoption schema into actual adoption of dogs and cats. However, ideally, the schema for pet adoptions could (and should) run over existing distribution infrastructure like ActivityPub.

https://www.w3.org/wiki/Activity_Streams/Primer/Extensions

It takes a schema and docs, which describe formats, validation, logic, msg exchanges to define what "app" means. These constitute a 'contract' whenever interoperability comes into play, and must be maintained somewhere discoverable, or all interoperability bets are off (and you get whack-a-mole development, app-by-app).

5/

So, not just Decentralized Social (DeSo), but instead —

Decentralized Social (DeSo), Federated Social (FeSo), Localized Social (LoSo)

The goal is 'social' that is simultaneously — 'Decentralized', 'Federated', and 'Localized', all at the same time.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@reiver/114551725757671167

#ActivityPub #ActivityStreams #Decentralization #DeSo #Federation #FeSo #Fediverse #governance #Localization #LoSo

4/

Federation is the word we use to describe that act of bringing together and connecting these separate Decentralized, Localized communities.

This is where protocols such as ActivityPub, ActivityStreams, etc come into play.

Federation is a voluntary choice.
But, so too is Defederation, if desired.

#ActivityPub #ActivityStreams #Decentralization #DeSo #Federation #FeSo #Fediverse #governance #Localization #LoSo

If you're trying to dereference all RDF namespaces found in the #ActivityStreams JSON-LD document you must first download the internet.

Now downloading google.com...

#ActivityPub #ActivityPubDev

1/

[Fediverse BackUp]

Could an ActivityPub / ActivityStreams file be a "good" format for backing up a post?

(I.e., what I call an "Activity File". I.e., the file that has a media-type of "application/activity+json".)

...

#ActivityPub #ActivityStreams #BackUp #BackUps #FediBackUp #FediDev #FediDevs #Fediverse

9/

[Fediverse BackUp]

So, I think an (ActivityPub / ActivityStreams) Activity File COULD be a "good" format for backing-up a single post on the Fediverse, but —

Most (maybe all) extant Fediverse software would need to change a bit. Fediverse software would need to support embedding "everything" in a single Activity File (rather than referring to "everything" else by URLs).

.

#ActivityPub #ActivityStreams #BackUp #BackUps #FediBackUp #FediDev #FediDevs #Fediverse

8/

[Fediverse BackUp]

Also — what about comments / replies —

Someone people (including me) would want at least some of the comments / replies to be included in a BackUp for a post.

So, for an Activity File to be a "good" format for a BackUp, a single Activity File would also need to contain (all or selected) the comments / replies to the post.

...

#ActivityPub #ActivityStreams #BackUp #BackUps #FediBackUp #FediDev #FediDevs #Fediverse

7/

[Fediverse BackUp]

Also — we would need to consider Threads / Storms —

Where people reply to their own post to make a larger post made up of smaller posts.

(I.e., what I have been doing here 🙂 )

For an Activity File to be a "good" format for a BackUp, a single Activity File would need to contain all the posts in the Thread / Storm.

Also —

...

#ActivityPub #ActivityStreams #BackUp #BackUps #FediBackUp #FediDev #FediDevs #Fediverse

6/

[Fediverse BackUp]

Also — we would need to consider Threads / Storms —

Where people reply to their own post to make a larger post made up of smaller posts.

(I.e., what I have been doing here 🙂 )

for an Activity File to be a "good" format for a BackUp, a single Activity File would need to contain all the posts in the Thread / Storm.

Also —

...

#ActivityPub #ActivityStreams #BackUp #BackUps #FediBackUp #FediDev #FediDevs #Fediverse

5/

[Fediverse BackUp]

But — for an Activity File to be a "good" format for a BackUp, there would need to be a way to get the Fediverse software to embed the (non-text) media (such as images, audio, video, etc) into an Activity File.

Also —

...

#ActivityPub #ActivityStreams #BackUp #BackUps #FediBackUp #FediDev #FediDevs #Fediverse

4/

[Fediverse BackUp]

Now, having said that, I don't think there is anything about ActivityPub / ActivityStreams that "prevents" Fediverse software from not embedding (non-text) media (such as images, audio, video, etc) into an Activity File —

For example, an "Image" Object can contain a ("mediaType" and a) "content" field (rather than an "href" field).

But —

...

#ActivityPub #ActivityStreams #BackUp #BackUps #FediBackUp #FediDev #FediDevs #Fediverse

3/

[Fediverse BackUp]

If you wanted to BackUp a post on the Fediverse, and all you download was the Activity File (with URLs pointing to the non-text media), then — you lost all the (non-text) media (such as images, audio, video, etc) that were part of the post.

Which would be bad.

...

#ActivityPub #ActivityStreams #BackUp #BackUps #FediBackUp #FediDev #FediDevs #Fediverse

2/

[Fediverse BackUp]

I think one challenge, in practice, with using an Activity File as a BackUp Format is that — a lot of Fediverse software does NOT embed (non-text) media (such images, audio, video, etc) in the Activity File.

But, instead references them using URLs.

(And, by "URL" I mean "URI", "IRI", etc.)

Usually this is probably a good thing, but —

...

#ActivityPub #ActivityStreams #BackUp #BackUps #FediBackUp #FediDev #FediDevs #Fediverse

1/

[Fediverse BackUp]

Could an ActivityPub / ActivityStreams file be a "good" format for backing up a post?

(I.e., what I call an "Activity File". I.e., the file that has a media-type of "application/activity+json".)

...

#ActivityPub #ActivityStreams #BackUp #BackUps #FediBackUp #FediDev #FediDevs #Fediverse

If you're trying to dereference all RDF namespaces found in the #ActivityStreams JSON-LD document you must first download the internet.

Now downloading google.com...

#ActivityPub #ActivityPubDev

4/

Apparently, Bookwyrm stores quotations with:

type="Quotation"

And if one Bookwyrm server talks to another Bookwyrm server, then — the ActivityPub / ActivityStreams representation of the quotation will have:

type="Quotation"

...

BUT — if a non-Bookwyrm server talks to a Bookwyrm server, then — the ActivityPub / ActivityStreams representation of the quotation will have:

type="Note"

#ActivityPub#ActivityStreams#FediDev#Fediverse#ObjectTypeNote#ObjectTypeQuotation

Quotations & the Fediverse / ActivityPub

1/

One thing I used to do a lot on social-media is — post quotations.

Sometimes I was reading a book. And, I would quote things from the book and post it on social-media.

Or I was reading a scholarly paper, or reading a blog post, or watching a video, or listening to a podcast, etc.

...

I was thinking — how could you represent a quotation in ActivityPub‽

#ActivityPub#ActivityStreams#FediDev#Fediverse#ObjectTypeNote#ObjectTypeQuotation