SocialCG/2019-09-11/minutes

<cwebber2> ================== IRC MEETING LOGGING STARTS ==================
<cwebber2> scribenick: dmitriz2 
<cwebber2> https://www.w3.org/wiki/SocialCG/2019-05-08
<cwebber2> https://www.w3.org/wiki/SocialCG/2019-09-11
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: How about we start with introductions
<dmitriz2> … Couple of things
<cwebber2> https://www.w3.org/community/wp-login.php?redirect_to=%2Fcommunity%2Fsocialcg%2Fjoin
<dmitriz2> … those of you joining for the first time — in order to participate in this Community Group in any substantial way, you need to official join the group (see link above)
<dmitriz2> … and the reason for that is Intellectual Property / patents type stuff
<dmitriz2> … I'll start. I'm Chris Webber, chair of the CG
<dmitriz2> … editor of the ActivityPub spec
<dmitriz2> cjd (?): hi, I'm Caleb,
<dmitriz2> … I went to the ActivityPubConf event
<cwebber2> dmitriz2: I'm Dmitri, software engineer working on decentralized ID and etc, worked on MIT's SOLID, now working on DIDs and etc at Digital Bazaar sometimes, very interested in decentralized social networks.  Was involved in the SocialWG, have recently dived back in
<dmitriz2> dariusk: I'm Darius, I just wrapped up a Mozilla Fellowship working on decentralized social media stuff
<dmitriz2> … I'm interested in helping people hang out with their friends in a nice way, so that's pretty much why I'm here
<dmitriz2> … and I make some AP software as well
<dmitriz2> gargron: hello, I'm the main developer of Mastodon,
<dmitriz2> … and am here to listen in on what the current ideas are, and to make comments as well
<dmitriz2> hellekin: I'm involved in a project in Brussels, Petit Singularity,
<dmitriz2> … also involved in a EU consortium, that gives money to Open Source projects, among them AP
<jesopo> mind if i do it on irc?
<jesopo> @ cwebber2
<jesopo> I'm jess. software dev for work and fun. hardware integration for work and mostly IRC bots for fun. Been writing up an S2S AP implementation in BitBot (my irc bot) for the last week or so. I love decrentralised systems and the theories behind them
<jesopo> <3
<hellekin> dmitriz2: that's Petites Singularités :)
<dmitriz2> lain_soykaf: hi I'm Lain, I started the Pleroma project, and am one of the main dv
<dmitriz2> melody: hi, I'm melody, primarily concerned with anti-harassment and anti-abuse in social networks
<trwnh> hi i'm trwnh (abdullah tarawneh) and i'm a casual observer who likes to know how things work. i've done a bit of scattered work for various fedi projects, i guess mainly pixelfed for now. btw it's pronounced ta-rawn-eh
<cwebber2> #topic AP Conf followup
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: ok, let's hop into the topics
<dmitriz2> … a lot of stuff happened at AP Conf
<dmitriz2> … the first day was a day full of talks, all very good, the second day was
<dmitriz2> … a keynote from Mark Miller of Object Capabilities fame, and the rest was unconference format
<dmitriz2> … event went really well, conversation with implementers
<dmitriz2> … I'm really excited about it, and to continue the conversation in the future
<dmitriz2> … ah, rigelk just joined the call, let's do introductions
<jaywink[m]> Hey, forgot to intro too. I'm jaywink, have been lurking in the W3C SocialWG/CG for some time. I work on Socialhome a Django based federated platform and also involved in the Federated Network Association.
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: ok lets talk about queue management on W3C type calls
<dmitriz2> … in general, you type q+ to add yourself to the queue
<dmitriz2> … and we acknowledge people in order, so they don't trip over each other
<hellekin> q+
<dmitriz2> … I'd love to get a feel for where everybody is, on moving forward as a community
<dmitriz2> q+
<dmitriz2> hellekin: during the conf, I proposed that we start a dedicated AP devroom at FOSDEM
<dmitriz2> … we picked that up, currently 7-8 ppl working on this, deadline is Sep 20,
<dmitriz2> … if you're interested in joining, there'll be a dedicated mailing list for this
<dmitriz2> … details forthcoming
<cwebber2> ack hellekin
<dmitriz2> … the idea is to reproduce the setup we had at APConf
<cwebber2> ack dmitriz2
<dmitriz2> … which is, first day of talks, then unconf the second day
<cwebber2> dmitriz2: I greatly enjoyed APConf, it was really good to get an idea of the current state of the industry of the projects; Mastodon, Pleroma, Florence, etc.  I had to leave early, missed the second day due to a family emergency, but the reason I added myself to the queue was to say that I was really glad the community was focusing on authorization and cross-server hashtag search, and hopefully extends to general purpose text search and user search
<cwebber2> q+
<cwebber2> ack cwebber2
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: a lot of the conversation (2nd day) was about what the future of ActivityPub might be
<dmitriz2> … in some ways, the conf brought together part of the Web of Trust community (that was one of the reasons we co-located with them) and the wider AP community in general
<dmitriz2> … some of the things we discussed was how to use some of the general ideas (such as Object Capabilities for authorization), also Data Shards (for persistence of data and accounts when servers go down)
<dmitriz2> … as well as the idea of Stamps introduced in OCap Pub, which could be adapted standalone
<dmitriz2> … I sensed initial skepticism early on (in terms of, it seemed that the OCap Pub ideas were "all or nothing")
<dmitriz2> … but I hope to get across that the various components can be adopted individually, piecemeal
<dmitriz2> … anybody else want to queue up?
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: I think the FOSDEM development is really great,
<dmitriz2> … I know there's also a Federation conf (not AP-specific) being planned in Barcelona next year
<dmitriz2> … next up, we'll speak about social.activitypub.rocks,
<dmitriz2> … also I want to talk about how much of a bottleneck I've been for this community, and how to reduce that
<dmitriz2> … so a devroom at FOSDEM is a great example of that (of reducing bottlenecks)
<dmitriz2> … I'm really interested in seeing what we can do as a community to keep each other engaged, moving forward, without me being a blocker
<dmitriz2> … including in the SocialCG here
<dmitriz2> … part of the problem I suspect is that we organize on the w3c Wiki, which is not easy
<dmitriz2> … and also only corporate members of W3C can actually edit the wiki,
<dmitriz2> … so I'm interested in talking about that
<dmitriz2> q+
<cwebber2> ack dmitriz2 
<cwebber2> dmitriz2: one good first step we can do is a general call for volunteers, to find an alternative wiki to host these, etc.  I personally definitely volunteer to help run the regular meetings, and I know that marie/maloki is also interested, and I'm sure we'll get other volunteers.  Other q is, given how AP is ramping up, should we move the calls to biweekly or even weekly
<cwebber2> q+
<cwebber2> ack cwebber2
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: moving the calls to bi-weekly or weekly is really great
<dmitriz2> … for a while, we were meeting more regularly, but lost some energy,
<dmitriz2> … partly due to stumbling block of extension points for activity streams etc
<dmitriz2> … anyways, I agree that now, with renewed energy, we should be having this more often
<dmitriz2> … another question is, when should we host them?
<dmitriz2> … a few people on IRC asked if we can move this to Saturday or Sunday
<hellekin> q+
<rigelk> (sorry for the lack of introduction earlier - I've had problems with my bridge) I'm Rigel Kent, part of the PeerTube and now OLKi project, a Django federated platform for scientific data.
<dmitriz2> … so timing would be a great thing to reopen discussions on
<cwebber2> ack hellekin 
<dmitriz2> hellekin: about frequency of meetings and where to host the logistics,
<dmitriz2> … I think there's a fear of missing out that we shouldn't fall into
<dmitriz2> … and if we have a better venue, in advance, for discussing,
<dmitriz2> … then a monthly or bi-weekly meeting would be enough
<dmitriz2> … cause we can have async conversation, and we can use the meeting for high-bandwidth communication, to clarify and so on
<dmitriz2> +1 to hellekin's comment about having good async platforms /in addition/ to calls
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: to reply to hellekin - makes sense, we need a better forum
<dmitriz2> … I think it'd be a good idea to test out bi-weekly, see if that works
<dmitriz2> … does that sound reasonable?
<dmitriz2> hellekin: yep!
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: on that note, if nothing else on that topic, lets talk about social hub
<dmitriz2> q+
<cwebber2> ack dmitriz2 
<cwebber2> dmitriz2: would it make sense to create a doodle poll for preferred time if we move it?
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: yeah, let's try to gauge people's availability
<dmitriz2> … and maybe we can test it on social hub on activitypub.rocks
<cwebber2> TOPIC: socialhub.activitypub.rocks
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: let's open that up by asking hellekin to introduce it and its purpose
<dmitriz2> hellekin: it started as a SocialHub network, started by mxb (?) from (?),
<dmitriz2> … and I thought it was a good idea. when we organized the Decentralized Internet devroom at FOSDEM last year, we moved about 40 people to that platform,
<dmitriz2> … with the idea of not splitting people over too many places
<dmitriz2> … then mxb kind of disappeared from the internet, which made us run into the 'hit by a bus' factor,
<dmitriz2> … and I think it's time to move on
<dmitriz2> … I know that jaywink started another forum,
<dmitriz2> … but I think we need an ActivityPub-specific forum
<cwebber2> q+
<dmitriz2> … and knowing that Discourse will implement ActivityPub at some point,
<hellekin> socialhub.network, socialhub.activitypub.rocks, forum.feneas.org
<dmitriz2> (pause for scribe catch-up :) )
<rigelk[m]> I'd prefer to
<jaywink[m]> my mumble doesn't seem to work
<rigelk[m]> I'm part of the PeerTube project and now of the OLKi project
<jaywink[m]> feneas forum is https://talk.feneas.org - but as said, it's a bit larger in scope, not just activitypub
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: the proposal is to set up the forum at socialhub.activitypub.rocks
<dmitriz2> … as an additional incubation space
<dmitriz2> … one of the things we discussed at APConf is that this community needs a place to continue its discussions
<dmitriz2> … so that's my impression of why we're talking about setting this up
<dmitriz2> … so I'll be setting up the DNS
<hellekin> q+
<dmitriz2> sebastian: the new place - could it be an ActivityPub actor itself?
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: I think hellekin mentioned earlier that Discourse will be AP-powered soon, I'm not sure what that means exactly,
<dmitriz2> … but I'm hoping it'll interop with the fediverse
<dmitriz2> sl007: my name is Sebastian, and me and Morgan just organized this past APConf, which was a great success,
<dmitriz2> … and I'm currently doing the video editing from the conferene
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: thank you so much, we are all very grateful for your work
<cwebber2> ack hellekin 
<dmitriz2> hellekin: I wanted to add on to the reasons as to why have this forum,
<dmitriz2> … as you said, the w3c platform has some friction, so one of the main drives to start this forum
<dmitriz2> … is to host a special interest group to prepare in advance discussion topics for the Social CG calls
<cwebber2> q+
<cwebber2> ack cwebber2
<dmitriz2> … and it may be good to have a lot of discussions for ActivityPub outside the CG,
<dmitriz2> … to free up resources / time in the CG
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: just to clarify,
<dmitriz2> … Aaron Parecki is the co-chair of the CG,
<dmitriz2> … and yes, he's more traditionally involved in IndieWeb community, but he has implemented ActivityPub
<dmitriz2> … also, since there's not a lot of activity in the CG, it's not like we're going to overload or displace the CG with ActivityPub conversations
<hellekin> q+
<dmitriz2> … ok, the other thing we want to discuss about socialhub is the governance. hellekin?
<cwebber2> ack hellekin
<dmitriz2> hellekin: first things first, we want to avoid the Bus Factor, so we want to have a larger group of moderators and admins
<dmitriz2> … I set up a specific VM for this, so I can share sysadmin/root access
<dmitriz2> … of course we'll need to vet this,
<dmitriz2> … hopefully people I've met in person at APConf, or other known people in this community
<dmitriz2> … as far as moderators, I know that maloki is interested, as well as other people as well
<dmitriz2> … re governance -
<dmitriz2> … how it's worked so far is - I was proposing stuff and leaving time for the collective to respond
<dmitriz2> … and I really hope we can have some sort of collective governance model
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: great
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: anybody else, before we move on to next topic?
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: the next two topics were sitting on the agenda for a while
<dmitriz2> … but it's worth bringing them up again
<dmitriz2> … the first one is the Evergreen Standards page at W3C
<cwebber2> https://www.w3.org/wiki/Evergreen_Standards
<dmitriz2> … the Evergreen Standards idea is - instead of the current mechanism (that standards start up in Community Groups, and go through chartering of Work Groups,
<dmitriz2> … and they go through the standard process,
<dmitriz2> … the idea of Evergreen standards is - we acknowledge that specs are dynamic, and evolve over time
<dmitriz2> … and we continue working on them and occasionally make snapshots
<dmitriz2> … so, read the document,
<dmitriz2> … and the question is, is this something the AP community wants to pursue?
<dmitriz2> … the most likely place we'd want to use it is to specify the behavior of _side effects_ of various terms
<lain_soykaf> q+
<dmitriz2> … which the working group touched on, but needs to be expanded, especially for new extensions that have appeared
<cwebber2> ack lain_soykaf 
<dmitriz2> lain_soykaf: I think this is absolutely needed, no way around it
<hellekin> +1
<dmitriz2> … if it doesn't happen officially, it'll happen implicitly and unofficially on wikis and so on
<dmitriz2> … cause we're already adding new extensions and implementing them
<dmitriz2> … so, I'm all for this
<dmitriz2> +1
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: I'd like to make a tentative proposal for this
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: just to gauge interest.
<trwnh> +1
<hellekin> +1
<Gargron> +1
<jaywink[m]> +1
<cwebber2> +1
<dmitriz2> … if you're interested in moving to an Evergreen Standard in general, type a +1/-1 etc
<dmitriz2> +1
<rigelk> +1
<dariusk> +1
<melody> +1
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: I think the ayes hav eit
<dmitriz2> … looks like overwhelming support for this
<dmitriz2> … I propose we give people one meeting to review this page, specifically,
<rigelk> +1
<dmitriz2> … and, barring objections, on another meeting, we move this towards taking the official step
<dmitriz2> q+
<hellekin> there's the issue of using github. Otherwise the process sounds good.
<cwebber2> ack dmitriz2 
<rigelk> +1 hellekin
<cwebber2> dmitriz2: cwebber2: would you be willing ot take the action item to send this to the mailing list
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: so, funny thing about that...
<dmitriz2> … we don't have a mailing list
<dmitriz2> … early on, people only wanted to use Github,
<dmitriz2> … but now it makes more sense, especially to use socialhub.activitypub.rocks
<dmitriz2> … so, proposal
<dmitriz2> … I think it's worthwhile to get community buy-in
<lain_soykaf> do it
<dmitriz2> … (typing proposal)
<cwebber2> PROPOSAL: Redirect socialhub.activitypub.rocks to the Discourse server for discussing ActivityPub-specific needs, use that as a more asynchronous communication platform for discussing AP topics, occasionally bringing them back to the SocialCG
<cwebber2> +1
<trwnh> +1
<dmitriz2> +1
<Gargron> +1
<rigelk> +1
<hellekin> +1
<lain_soykaf> +1
<dmitriz2> specifically, this is to use that Discourse forum /instead/ of a traditional w3c style mailing list?
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: yes
<melody> +1
<dmitriz2> … we can have a separate convo about bridging the two
<dariusk> +1
<sl007> +1
<dmitriz2> … but since we don't have a mailing list currently, this won't be a blocker
<dmitriz2> great, makes sense!
<dmitriz2> thanks!
<cwebber2> RESOLVED: Redirect socialhub.activitypub.rocks to the Discourse server for discussing ActivityPub-specific needs, use that as a more asynchronous communication platform for discussing AP topics, occasionally bringing them back to the SocialCG
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: ok resolved! when I set up the DNS, I'll open a thread discussing the Evergreen Specs
<dmitriz2> … and what the next steps are
<dmitriz2> … is there anything else people want to discuss?
<dmitriz2> … next up: using Accept / Reject for more stuff than just Follow and Offer actions
<cwebber2> TOPIC: Using Accept/Reject for more than just Follow and Offer
<trwnh> +q
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: ok, I don't remember the context, but it should be possible to use Accept/Reject for other stuff
<cwebber2> ack trwnh
<trwnh> ok so this might have intersections with the discussion around extensions and evergreen stuff, but...
<jaywink[m]> Would be great if platforms sent a Reject for activities they are not going to process so senders could relay that information to users.
<dmitriz2> oh interesting.
<trwnh> my thinking with proposing this was to signal whether an activity was processed with side effects, in a way that is more informative than just http status codes.
<dmitriz2> q+
<cwebber2> q+
<cwebber2> ack dmitriz2 
<cwebber2> dmitriz2: I agree for sure that more info in machine readable format would be great.  I'd much rather see it... not as an extension, but handled at the AP level that the response contains a JSON object with more information, including about rejection, rather than use an activity-level Reject object for it
<cwebber2> ack cwebber2
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: I think part of the challenge is that -
<dmitriz2> … and this became more clear to me as I was writing the AP test suite
<dmitriz2> … one of the reasons that AP doesn't give you a lot of information immediately with request/response, is that async implementations need time to process
<trwnh> +q
<dmitriz2> … or a user needs to take time to process a decision
<dmitriz2> … so expecting immediate feedback in a response might not be possible
<dmitriz2> … but one way around this could be - something along the lines of Promises that get resolved, possibly using Webhooks or something
<trwnh> i think the async factor is exactly why such signalling might be useful? if you send me a Create and i receive it successfully, i may want to let you know a day later that it wasn't delivered to the actor
<dmitriz2> … but I realize that I'm just throwing it out there without a formal proposal, so it might be confusing
<cwebber2> ack trwnh
<trwnh> or that something else went wrong
<cwebber2> q+
<dmitriz2> does ActivityStreams2 have an explicit Error object?
<cwebber2> ack cwebber2
<trwnh> similar to how email servers give you indications
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: so there's a challenge to introducing new places to use Accept / Reject might increase confusion among implementors
<dmitriz2> … I'm uncertain about doing this stuff ad-hoc
<trwnh> +q
<dmitriz2> … it would be great to make a list where this kind of more informative errors would be helpful
<cwebber2> ack trwnh
<trwnh> this would probably be a good thing to discuss more in-depth on socialhub after it's set up
<trwnh> since it is very in-depth
<dmitriz2> +1
<cwebber2> +1
<trwnh> and it would be nice to have a generalized framework
<hellekin> +1
<hellekin> Might HTTP code 102 (Processing) or 202 (Accepted) be useful in this context?
<dmitriz2> oh good call, re http 202
<hellekin> will do
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: excellent, lets bring that convo to the discourse server when it's set up
<dmitriz2> … any other comments?
<dmitriz2> … next up: when do we want to do the next meeting?
<melody> q+
<cwebber2> ack melody 
<dmitriz2> melody: I was just thinking, one thing that we want to keep in mind is
<dmitriz2> … the usecase where - I think there's a certain degree to which implementations are relying on being opaque
<dmitriz2> … in terms of what information they give back to actors
<dmitriz2> … especially in scenarios of where somebody is blocked, or soft-blocked
<trwnh> q+
<dmitriz2> … so, being able to explicitly NOT say that an activity succeeded, is important
<dmitriz2> +1, excellent point
<cwebber2> ack trwnh
<trwnh> i conceptualized it months ago as similar in vein to accept/reject follow, but of course general
<trwnh> so there exists the state
<trwnh> where the follow is neither accepted or rejected
<dmitriz2> something like 'acknowledged'? :)
<trwnh> similarly, impls that don't want to reveal info
<trwnh> can simply choose not to send accept/reject
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: that's true, although it does leave the question
<dmitriz2> … how should those impls render the new state?
<dmitriz2> … especially if we're adding it all over the place
<trwnh> basically, we already have this issue to some degree
<dmitriz2> … but this is great conversation for Discourse
<dmitriz2> … let's move on, since we only have a couple mins left
<trwnh> again though, more in-depth on discourse forum :)
<dmitriz2> … Do people want to move this to two weeks from now (as opposed to next month)?
<dmitriz2> … I'm going to make a proposal
<hellekin> q+
<dmitriz2> q+ to ask about where the meeting notes will be published
<dmitriz2> hellekin: with another group, we had rotating meetings on weekends and weekdays, so people could have more choice
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: let's do a quick show of hands
<cwebber2> +0 to next meeting on wednesday, +1 to weekend
<hellekin> +0
<sl007> +1
<rigelk> +0
<hellekin> +0 +1
<cwebber2> ack dmitriz
<cwebber2> dmitriz2: the question is where do we start the cycle?  do we alternate?
<trwnh> +q
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: good question, also we're out of time,
<dmitriz2> … I'm gonna make a quick proposal
<cwebber2> PROPOSED: Do next meeting on Sep 28th, 15:00 UTC, and meeting following that on Oct 12th, 15:00 UTC
<cwebber2> +1
<dmitriz2> +1
<trwnh> +q
<hellekin> +1
<cwebber2> ack trwnh
<sl007> +1
<trwnh> i was thinking if we alternate, can we also cycle times of day?
<hellekin> yes good idea
<trwnh> waking up at certain times consistently is uncertain
<dmitriz2> good idea.
<melody> 0
<hellekin> +q
<trwnh> otherwise +1 to cycling dates at least between wed / weekend
<dmitriz2> we can also discuss this on Discourse
<cwebber2> ack hellekin
<dmitriz2> hellekin: yeah, we can start the discussion on Discourse.
<dmitriz2> … how about we have the next meeting on Sep 28, and then make a doodle poll,
<dmitriz2> … and get more info
<dmitriz2> cwebber2: sounds good
<cwebber2> RESOLVED: Do next meeting on Sep 28th, 15:00 UTC, and meeting following that on Oct 12th, 15:00 UTC
<dmitriz2> … ok, let's wrap up! thanks everyone
<hellekin> o/
<dmitriz2> … see you in 2 weeks, and on Discourse
<lain_soykaf> byebye
<rigelk> bye!
<sl007> bye
<dmitriz2> cwebber2 - where do the minutes go? the wiki?
<cwebber2> ================== MEETING LOGGING ENDS ==================