Social Web Incubator Community Group

31 May 2017

Attendees

Present: sandro, ajordan, MMN-work, aaronpk, nightpool, ben_thatmustbeme, jaywink, astronouth, SocialCG, astronouth7303
Chair: aaronpk
Scribe: nightpool

sandro: The Social Web Working Group hasn't had any particular changes from last week, still working on ActivityPub and WebSub.
... w3c advisory committee is still voting on whether to extend the SWWG charter
... To work on activitypub for longer, given recent interest
... may turn into community spec if charter doesn't get extended

<aaronpk> https://aaronparecki.com/2017/05/30/1/w3c-micropub

<Loqi> [Aaron Parecki] Micropub is a W3C Recommendation

aaronpk: micropub has turned into a reccomendation since last week
... the websub testsuite is up to date, and at websub.rocks
... we're looking for implementation reports, especially from people running current websub impls
... People who are running mastodon, for example, would count here and are welcome to submit reports.

<aaronpk> details here https://websub.rocks/

<aaronpk> https://www.w3.org/TR/websub/#change-log

nightpool: how many changes have their been to websub since it was PubSubHubbub?

aaronpk: not many, we're aiming for compatability aaronpk: there's a changelog section in the spec.
... For example, we're looking at implementing 410 Gone as a response from subscriberrs

<aaronpk> https://github.com/w3c/websub/issues/106

<Loqi> [Alkarex] #106 Suggestion: Use HTTP 410 Gone

<MMN-work> Good addition to the websub spec!

aaronpk: because implmentations are doing it
... and it doesn't break interoperability with existing hubs

<sandro> https://github.com/swicg/general/issues/4

<Loqi> [sandhawke] #4 Forwarding

GH issue #4 - Forwarding

sandro: there's been a longstanding question in decentralized systems: what do you do when a server goes down?
... issue #1 talks about this a bit, and there's a lot of discussion there.
... When I was looking at setting up a w3c mastodon instance, and talking to the systems people
... they said that they didn't want to run mastodon, because eventually they would to shut it down, and users would be stranded
... But they'd be willing to run a forwarding server, and that seems to be the majority usecase
... where people want to shut things down orderly, do sunsets

<aaronpk> websub section on redirects: https://w3c.github.io/websub/#subscription-migration

sandro: But I wanted to make sure that we talked about it in the spec, and look into what current implementations do for redirects
... and behave gracefully in allowing users to move to different sites

<Loqi> Benthatmustbeme made 1 edit to Socialwg/AccountDiscovery https://www.w3.org/wiki/index.php?diff=103078&oldid=103077

aaronpk: what's the goal for this call?

sandro: experience, mostly, looking at what people have tried
... or other feedback

<cwebber2> oh shoot

<cwebber2> I thought it was in 40 mins

nightpool: I'm worried about the longevity of these redirect servers

... most companies, they want to have a sunsetting process, and then be done with it

... not maintaining something in perpetuity

<Zakim> MMN-work, you wanted to discuss redirect and URI stuff

sandro: I agree that's a concern, but I think that if you're being responsibile, you need to do redirects in perpetuity
... URLs get printed in books, etc

<ajordan> heya cwebber2!

<cwebber2> hi

MMN-work: when you do redirects for your URLs, you still have to have an identifier, and you still have to have local databases
... and you have to figure out what to change in the local database

sandro: right, the question here is "when do you consider this permanent", and when do you change your users URL

<MMN-work> The point I was trying to get across was that when you move servers the URL/URI for that account stored with other servers is going to have to be updated - if the URI is supposed to be a fully functional URL

<Zakim> ajordan, you wanted to clarify

<jaywink> from experience in the diaspora world for some years I would guess typically server admins who shut down their pod want to shut down evrything, not run a service after that. And many times the server just disappears of the grid without warning.

sandro: Gargron brought this up, that's he's worried about user account hijacking

cwebber2: I'm sympathetic to this, although I feel like once you have access to somebodies account you have lots of opportunities to do damage

ajordan: I think the problem here is that most things you mentioned can be undone, you can undo side-effects, undelete post, etc.

<MMN-work> nightpool++

<Loqi> nightpool has 1 karma

<MMN-work> good summary of my rambling :)

ajordan: but once you've been redirected to another server, there's no way to tell that server to "unredirect" you

aaronpk: there's a non-technical solution for this too, and a post like "hey, i'm leaving X domain, go find me on this domain instead"
... and that only works while the servers up, but I'm reluctent to push a technical solution when a solution exists anyway

cwebber2: this comes out of solutions like that--both on pump.io and on mastodon, I've seen lots of people leave messages like that, which basically imitate the behavior we have here
... but you're right, people do work around it at the moment

<sandro> +1 make this work for non-human systems!

ajordan: I may be architecture astronauting, but I think it's really cool how standards have interop with non-technical systems
... but if you go with the nontechnical solution of "post a note saying you've moved" you'll break interop

<MMN-work> aaronpk & sandro: I'm a proponent of making social systems requiring social interactions, including some things that are "too manual" .)

sandro: Am I hearing any disagreement? Or do most people think that systems should handle redirects cleanly?

nightpool: I think the 30 day heuristic alleviates my concerns

cwebber2: apologies about missing the time

Using Discourse for activitypub

cwebber2: Maloki and Gargron brought up hosting a activitypub category on the mastodon discourse forum

<MMN-work> cwebber2: I am text-only today

cwebber2: I know that there's some existing people who don't feel comfortable using Github

cwebber2: MMN-work, would you like to give a summary of your concerns?

<MMN-work> You can continue discussing

<MMN-work> and I'll write something up

cwebber2: Anyway, this could provide an alternative, although we would have to talk about how to bridge convos back and forth

ajordan: chris I'm definitely with you on fragmented conversations, I find most things beside issue trackers hard to use
... Is there a compelling reason to keep tracking for this group on Github, rather then switching to something like Gitlab?
... Because that seems like it would solve both problems.

<jaywink> +1 on that, fragmentation would make following discussions harder

cwebber2: Gitlab came up in the working group discussions. The problems raised is that many people on the working group used Github, and they would have to create another account (federated identities...)
... and that the w3c has some amount of tooling around it, although I'm unsure what exactly that is.

sandro: I'm not aware of any tooling, although I might be missing something?

aaronpk: I think it has to do with backing things up for legal purposes

sandro: But we're not under the w3 org, so we might not be getting that.

cwebber2: Discourse does seem to walk a line between issue trackers and traditional forum software
... it allows for closing/resolving threads, for example

<cwebber2> https://discourse.joinmastodon.org/t/solved-1-4-rc3-error-compiling-webpacker-assets/223

ajordan: as another note, gitlab has a "sign in with github" button, which may alleviate concerns about additional accounts?

sandro: I just tried using Discourse this morning, I had never used it before and I liked it.
... I liked the forwarding discussion I saw there, and I linked one way but should like the other way

<ajordan> sandro++

<Loqi> sandro has 41 karma in this channel (48 overall)

sandro: If the idea here is to use Mastodon's discourse installation, would other projects feel excluded?

cwebber2: It might be, I don't know. We would have to ask

<ben_thatmustbeme> we need to make our own decentralized social system so we can design a decentralized social system

cwebber2: I wouldn't feel that about my own projects, but I know that there might be some concerns there, and we would have to hear from other people
... another concern is what happens to our discussions if their installation goes down
... And that's a concern for Github as well, big services (such as google code) have gone down in the past

<MMN-work> I'll paste this:

<MMN-work> I am personally not using GitHub because I cannot accept their TOS. I agree that using a separate discussion forum is much work (and I'm probably the only one currently to actively avoid GitHub).

<saranix> MMN-work: I actively avoid github too

<MMN-work> Suddenly GitHub (or whatever third party we host through) could change TOS, forbid a certain participant to log in because of actions in some _other_ repository etc.

<MMN-work> The bottom line is I don't think it should be hosted on a domain not controlled by the community of SWICG. Also "multiple accounts" is very little an issue if the tool used has third party logins (OpenID/OAuth)

<jaywink> so could mastodon ;)

ajordan: I think my main concern is about how other people perceive this, *we* know that we just happen to be there, but the average observer would not
... so I'm a tentative -1 between backup concerns and that.

<MMN-work> cwebber2++

<Loqi> cwebber2 has 85 karma

<saranix> agree should be hosted under w3 control. Also agree with bad optics of Mastodon, even if control wasn't an issue. optics being that they are very silicon valley hipster of the day

sandro: does gitlab solve this problem? or would we have to have an installation of gitlab or an installation of discourse somewhere else?

<sandro> MMN-work, would you be fine with gitlab.com ?

ajordan: I think gitlab.com would solve these problems?

aaronpk: gitlab.com seems like it would just be moving to another 3rd party service, which doesn't solve the concerns MMN-work raised.

<astronouth7303> aaronpk: gitlab can be self-hosted for free. It's FOSS+Premium.

sandro: I can't find evidence of it right now, but I think MIT may have a gitlab instance? Which we may be able to use, given that w3c is somewhat part of MIT.

sandro: i would prefer it be w3c branded, but that may be another option

<aaronpk> astronouth7303, i know, that's not my point

<ajordan> an sorry I just read MMN-work's comment again, I missed a bit

<MMN-work> sandro aaronpk: Currently GitLab hosts git.gnu.io for us, so if we had a domain name to use I'm sure they could take care of the hosting part

<MMN-work> sandro aaronpk: us = GNU social

cwebber2: It sounds like we don't want to use discourse, and we can continue this conversation on better venues later.

aaronpk: we can continue this discussion on IRC or other forums.

<sandro> MMN-work, okay, that sounds like a good option.

cwebber2: we have a little bit less people here then usual, do we want to get this shortname thing over with or postpone for another week?

Social Web Incubator Community Group Shortname

aaronpk: naming is always a rabbithole, I would consider punting

<tantek> good morning #social!

cwebber2: we can do this discussion async

sandro: let's poll the channel on consensus for the name
... and maybe we can set it aside quickly

<tantek> I see I made it just in time for the fun part ;)

<ajordan> morning tantek

<saranix> shortnaming?

cwebber2: okay, 1 minute summary: our full name is set in stone, but we're considering two options for the short name

<tantek> here's the big question? which one has a twitter account available? :P

cwebber2: one option is SWICG, which is hard to pronounce but keeps the "incubator" and "web" aspects, which may be important for some people

<sandro> I strongly prefer "SocialCG" to "SWICG" because (1) easier to say (2) easier to guess what it means, (3) less likely to mean something else (semantic web?)

cwebber2: the other option is SocialCG, because it's more pronounceable and implies more continuity with SocialWG
... and we mention the incubator and web aspects on the wiki page heavily

<MMN-work> tantek: No problem, we could register TheReal$shortname

<tantek> note: the WG has commonly been referred to as both SWWG and SocialWG and it doesn't seem to be confusing anyone

<tantek> re: that semweb comment sandro

aaronpk: Just to mention where this would be used--it's the namespace for the wiki page, it's the account for social media, and on the w3 url for the group.

<tantek> so maybe we don't have to pick?

<ajordan> SocialCG++

<Loqi> socialcg has 1 karma

<cwebber2> SocialCG

<sandro> SocialCG

<MMN-work> SWICG

<jaywink> +1 SocialCG

<nightpool> SocialCG

<tantek> SWICG++

<Loqi> swicg has 1 karma

<aaronpk> well we need to pick one to use consistently in URLs at least

<MMN-work> (don't really mind though)

<tantek> yeah same.

<geppy> Sorry I'm late.

<tantek> for the wiki I have to admit /Socialcg has a certain parallelism with /Socialwg

<ajordan> we seem to be evenly divided

<ajordan> excellent

<rhiaro> +1 SocialCG

<geppy> + SocialCG

<ben_thatmustbeme> SWICG++

<Loqi> swicg has 2 karma

<tantek> like I said, maybe we don't have to choose to only have one

<saranix> SWICG++

<Loqi> swicg has 3 karma

<ajordan> tantek++

<Loqi> tantek has 57 karma in this channel (345 overall)

<sandro> 7-2 right?

<sandro> now 7-3

<astronouth7303> +1 SocialCG, if only because it looks wordish, not just a jumble of letters.

<tantek> !karma SocialCG

<Loqi> socialcg has 1 karma

<sandro> 8-3

<tantek> !karma SWICG

<Loqi> swicg has 3 karma

<rhiaro> SocialCG++

<Loqi> too much karma!

<tantek> lol

<aaronpk> lol karma votes don't work cause rate limiting

cwebber2: Looks like 8-3, which isn't a complete landslide victory, and it doesn't capture everybody
... but it does seem to be the leaning here

sandro: that's what we're currently using on the wiki, right?

<ajordan> I count 4 for SWICG

<nightpool> (rhiaro, sorry, that was my fault: cwebber called for votes but I didn't transcribe that part)

cwebber2: this feels extremely bikesheddy, and we do need to choose one

<sandro> I might be upset with swicg -- feels like bad branding

<tantek> I prefer SWICG in for branding/comms in general. I am OK with w3.org/wiki/Socialcg as a parallel to w3.org/wiki/Socialwg (and /Socialig FWIW)

cwebber2: does anyone feel strongly that they would be upset if one of these was chosen?

<geppy> I'm fine with SWICG being used for the wiki or whatever, and I'm fine with CWICG being used, but I feel like it's clearer especially to outsiders if I talk about SocialCG

<ajordan> +1 to remark about talking to outsiders

cwebber2: we're seeing some preferences, and maybe some strong preferences
... and it looks like we might not be in trouble from the people here if we choose socialcg

<tantek> we have @SocialWebWG right?

cwebber2: we might want to throw this out to the rest of the world, or decide on this once and for all here

<tantek> did someone register @SocialWebCG ?

<saranix> could go both ways when talking to outsiders. They could get confused about diff between CG and WG, also could be missing the Incubator and Web apsects. OTOH, SWICG is opaque at first glance as well.

<tantek> again, parallelism in context

cwebber2: aaronpk do you have a preference whether we decide now or not?

aaronpk: I see arguments for both sides, but we should probably close this discussion sooner rather then later

cwebber2: should we do a resolution?

<tantek> cwebber2, what about narrowing the decision to just the wiki path?

<tantek> rather than a general bikeshed discussion?

sandro: that would be useful

<cwebber2> PROPOSED: Accept majority of straw poll as SocialCG for group shortname.

<cwebber2> +1

<sandro> +1

<ajordan> +1

<nightpool> +1

<geppy> +1

<MMN-work> +0

<jaywink> +1

<MMN-work> That's how you do it right? .)

<geppy> tantek: Someone registered @SocialWebCG on Twitter in May of 2017, I'm guessing that means right now someone here grabbed it.

<sandro> yeah +0 is don't care, but leaning yes, -0 is don't want to stop things but don't feel great, -1 mean STOP

<MMN-work> Cool, thanks for the explanation.

<astronouth7303> +1

<tantek> -0

<aaronpk> +0

<ben_thatmustbeme> 0

<saranix> -0

cwebber2: we don't have any -1s, and we did do this based off of the poll

RESOLUTION: Accept majority of straw poll as SocialCG for group shortname.

cwebber2: it's a mix of positive and wishy-washy, so I feel we can probably close this

aaronpk: we are at the top of the hour, and that's the end of our scheduled time
... we still have three or four things on the agenda
... but we can probably wait until next week?

<MMN-work> agreed

cwebber2: yes, meetings are weekly now

aaronpk: everyone is welcome to continue chatting on IRC or on the call, it just won't be part of the official minutes

<geppy> Thanks, all, sorry I missed everything.

cwebber2: we officially finished painting a bikeshed!

<ben_thatmustbeme> nightpool++ for minuting

<Loqi> nightpool has 2 karma

<cwebber2> geppy: np, it happens! I missed the first 20 minutes too, and I scheduled it... oops.

do I do generate minutes, or should someone else?

<aaronpk> trackbot, end meeting

<aaronpk> agenda for next week is up https://www.w3.org/wiki/SocialCG/2017-06-07

Summary of Action Items

Summary of Resolutions

Accept majority of straw poll as SocialCG for group shortname.

[End of minutes]

SocialCG/2017-05-31/minutes