Chebucto Regional Softball Club

[eeeee](/user/eeeee%40community.nodebb.org) [this blog post](https://community.nodebb.org/topic/18821/topic-thumbnails-uploads-and-media-display) should shed some light on my decision-making, but I'm open to changes!

[silverpill@mitra.social](https://community.nodebb.org/user/silverpill%40mitra.social) I thought about checking against the outbox, but there's a potential race condition that could occur if I receive the `Create(Note)` at roughly the same time as the community, but the community hasn't processed the activity yet. In that scenario, the activity would not be in the outbox for checking. The same thing would happen if there was some out-of-band check for object membership in a collection (not that there is one right now).

I'm wondering how content on threadiverse is automatically assigned its community when received by the software (e.g. PieFed, Lemmy, Mbin). The answer I am expecting is "if the community is addressed (`to`, `cc`, `audience`), then it is slotted into that community". **However** that causes issues for compatibility with microblogs... for example, [silverpill@mitra.social](https://community.nodebb.org/user/silverpill%40mitra.social) recently authored a post that mentioned `[swf@socialwebfoundation.org](https://community.nodebb.org/category/swf@socialwebfoundation.org)` and it got slotted into that community on NodeBB, which isn't correct since that group is private. Better practice would be to only trust the addressed community if it is `Announce`'d by the community directly, but would fall short if my instance does not receive the `Announce` (say, if nobody follows the community), in which case we'd fall back to "uncategorized", which is where all microblog posts currently go. Then it's neither correct nor incorrect, I suppose. I think this might be an issue where NodeBB tries to be too many things at once (microblog and threadiverse compatible).

[bh4-tech](https://community.nodebb.org/user/bh4-tech) might be not working because I did not expect urls. Can you try a handle like `dansup@mastodon.social`?

[bh4-tech](https://community.nodebb.org/user/bh4-tech) can you supply the URLs you tried to follow please?

[frankm@linux-nerds.org](https://community.nodebb.org/user/frankm%40linux-nerds.org) this is now done. Turns out I wasn't actually stopping a category from following a user, so that didn't need rolling back. https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/issues/13232 [hamiller@forum.wedistribute.org](https://community.nodebb.org/user/hamiller%40forum.wedistribute.org) using a hashtag is probably also something I should allow categories to follow, although that's local-only to the instance because of how hashtags work. Either way I didn't want to restrict a valid use case

[frankm@linux-nerds.org](https://community.nodebb.org/user/frankm%40linux-nerds.org) the reason why I'm hesitant about this is because allowing a category to follow a user bakes in the assumption that _everything the user posts is relevant_. If you're following something like the linux foundation that's a pretty safe bet for a Linux category, but what if you follow a user and they start sharing or posting about unrelated things, like what they had for breakfast, etc.? That's where things could get messy. ---- **But**, I absolutely love the idea of creating a category and making it sort of like a curated channel based around one idea. This is the kind of cool stuff I want to see!

[CWSmith](https://community.nodebb.org/user/cwsmith) not _right now_, no. A category can only follow other accounts that identify themselves as "Group". This is to take advantage of synchronization logic that regular users don't supply (and even then not all groups do either). However I'll keep this workflow in mind, it's an interesting idea!

[@kirk@social.coop](https://community.nodebb.org/user/kirk%40social.coop) just wanted to drop a note that your two issues have not been forgotten

Hi [@neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk](https://community.nodebb.org/user/neil%40mastodon.neilzone.co.uk), thanks [@andyprice@mastodon.social](https://community.nodebb.org/user/andyprice%40mastodon.social) for the shout out. I recommend NodeBB as it's one of a few forums that are still maintained and evolving. The latest version brings support for federation, allowing communication between it and any other software that supports ActivityPub (such as Mastodon, Lemmy, etc.) We focus on the lightweight and fast aspects of forum software. Communication should be seamless, and the software should be lightweight.

[@silverpill@mitra.social](https://community.nodebb.org/user/silverpill%40mitra.social) when discussed with Nutomic about this, I made the case that 1b12 is excellent for synchronization. 7888 (and 171b, etc.) are good for backfill, in cases where there is no 1b12 implementation available.

For those who were unable to attend this past weekend's Social Web After Hours event held at HackerSpace Brussels ([@hsbxl@mastodon.online](https://community.nodebb.org/user/hsbxl%40mastodon.online)), I've uploaded a re-recording of my presentation, which you can check out here! Sadly, there was no live recording of the rather lively session, so you'll just have to take my word for it https://spectra.video/w/xwCSYfZh1mJY64zJ9GngbE If you're looking for just the slides, you can get them here as well * [Slides (PDF warning)](https://community.nodebb.org/assets/uploads/files/1738635204524-the-fediverse-is-quiet-let-x27-s-fix-that.pdf) Thank you [@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org](https://community.nodebb.org/user/deadsuperhero%40social.wedistribute.org) for the PeerTube instance!

[@jiejie@mastodon.social](https://community.nodebb.org/user/jiejie%40mastodon.social) good question! The answer ultimately lies in how you want to communicate with your audience. Each option is different and it's hard for you to know which software is the best fit. That's why even when I say NodeBB sits somewhere in between microblogs and blogs, NodeBB might not be the right solution, yeah? What kind of site do _you_ want to build, how in depth do you want to go, etc.?

Lastly, there are so many others in the long-form text space who were not at FOSDEM, but are open and willing to work together! [@rimu@mastodon.nzoss.nz](https://community.nodebb.org/user/rimu%40mastodon.nzoss.nz) (PieFed), [@scott@authorship.studio](https://community.nodebb.org/user/scott%40authorship.studio) (Hubzilla), Mike MacGirvin (whose handle I forget at the moment) and so many more. Just because you weren't here does not mean you were forgotten. Your software was mentioned and discussed too!

[@tommi@pan.rent](https://community.nodebb.org/user/tommi%40pan.rent) let's all just give up and keep pressing this button 

[@esk@hachyderm.io](https://community.nodebb.org/user/esk%40hachyderm.io) obv. yesssss join us

I should also mention that we had great conversations with the Mastodon team (hi [@renchap@oisaur.com](https://community.nodebb.org/user/renchap%40oisaur.com) and [@dave@upp2.com](https://community.nodebb.org/user/dave%40upp2.com)!), and their commitments to working towards better support for long-form text is evident. Good vibes all around.

Among the fediverse there are microblogs (your Mastodons, Misskeys(+forks), etc. Then there are the long form peeps. We managed to all find each other at FOSDEM 2025. Pictured is [@matt@writing.exchange](https://community.nodebb.org/user/matt%40writing.exchange) (Write freely), [@pfefferle@mastodon.social](https://community.nodebb.org/user/pfefferle%40mastodon.social) (WordPress), and yours truly (NodeBB). We also had some good conversations with [@johnonolan@mastodon.xyz](https://community.nodebb.org/user/johnonolan%40mastodon.xyz) (Ghost), but I wasn't quick enough with my camera Let's move the state of long-form text on the open social web, forward! 

[@eeeee](https://community.nodebb.org/user/eeeee) I believe LemmyBB was a proof-of-concept, to show that Lemmy as it existed back then was able to be represented in the front-end as a tradtional forum. But also, nutomic (who _may_ have made LemmyBB? not sure.) is a busy person who has a day job and doesn't work on lemmy full-time

[@Kichae](https://community.nodebb.org/user/kichae) I'm not seeing an issue (although I haven't done exhaustive testing) between my test instance and this site. Can you let me know one of your federating categories, so I can try to set up a sync?