Post
I've seen an ongoing debate between "Note" versus "Article" in ActivityPub / ActivityStreams.
When is something a "Note"‽
When is something an "Article"‽
Personally — I would probably have made the distinction this way.
An "Article" has a title.
A "Note" doesn't have a title.
(In ActivityPub / ActivityStreams, a 'title' seems to tend to get represented in the "name" field.)
@reiver I don't think there really are any articles in the #fediverse. There are links, but the texts themselves are read through URIs.
@khleedril@cyberplace.social there absolutely are!
Any NodeBB topic over 500 characters is an article with a title, and federates out as the Article type.
Mastodon gets a sub-500 character summary, and displays that.
Some of that is more about Mastodon, than the Fediverse.
Mastodon doesn't give you the text of an Article, but instead gives you a link to it.
But, at this machine-level (in the ActivityPub / ActivityStreams data), the content is there for both Notes and Articles.
Mastodon just treats them differently.
@reiver@mastodon.social Mastodon can, and that's what the long form text FEP enables.
If you set a summary, Mastodon will faithfully show it, even for Article types.
@khleedril @reiver that's not true at all. Every post from @writefreely and @WordPress (with federation turned on) federates the whole post. It's just that mastodon doesn't render the post it self but most other fediverse servers do.
@khleedril @reiver try using akkoma https://fe.disroot.org is a good instance, and follow some blogs
@reiver@mastodon.social that's a good summary for it.
@reiver it is a good question. It is also a question that is formulated from the perspective on how we currently see the AS/AP fediverse.
> I've seen an ongoing debate between "Note" versus "Article" in #ActivityPub / #ActivityStreams.
> When is something a "Note"‽
> When is something an "Article"‽
The question makes sense from the notion of what the current #fediverse is. It makes less sense from the context of AS/AP as described in the protocol specs.
Background to my post is this observation: https://social.coop/@smallcircles/116109447243110037
Then the answer to when is something a Note or an Article is: Always. Note is Note in ActivityStreams and Article is Article.
The question that you would be asking, if only we had a fediverse that followed the original promise of the open standards, is:
> "When is something a Note or an Article in a Microblogging domain?"
For instance.. types you have in any domain depend on your model preferences. Could be anything that serves needs of a solution.
Btw, I am sorry as I should've added "tangential" to the above, but was out of chars. I borrowed your post to continue my argument made elsewhere.
Adding an analogy that popped up as a showerthought just now, to clarify further what I refer to..
In a different context someone who creates a Webshop webapp might ask:
> When is something a "Product" or "Invoice" in HTTP / HTML?
It is not fully equivalent, but demonstrative of how the concepts clash, mixing solution space with protocol vocabulary in language use.
Yet this is what happens continuously in all fediverse developer talk, sowing endless confusion, but also leads to complete different, incompatible views and expectations on what fediverse is, and where it is headed.
We have a laissez-faire fediverse. Handy, as you can just hack things in. But also directionless and random.
In the old blogging software I created back in the 1990s, I had a handful of posts types
There was a type of rich-text oriented post that had a title. (Article)
And, there way another type of rich-text oriented post that did not have a title. (Note)
(There were also other types of posts, but they aren't relevant here)
These 2 types of posts were rendered / displayed differently
I.e., my 1990s software already had this distinction
@reiver there's a page on this in the primer:
https://www.w3.org/wiki/Activity_Streams/Primer/Article_and_Note
But it's not always clear.
One thing that might distinguish is presentation.
I expect an Article to appear on its own page. References to an Article in a stream or tree layout might just include title and summary, with a link to a UI to show the full text.
But lots of Note objects can fit in a stream or tree presentation.
