This past June, I put together a write-up about two major approaches to backfilling conversations. The ability to properly backfill conversations means we will be able to make major inroads toward solving the feeling that the fediverse is quiet.

I, alongside several other members of the SWICG Forums and Threaded Discussions Task Force (ForumWG) have been working toward building implementor support for Conversational Contexts — the ability to explicitly classify a set of objects as belonging to a conversation, whether that be a topic, reply tree, or similar.

I am happy to report that we have made some wonderful inroads this past few months!

jesseplusplus@mastodon.social has been working closely with the Mastodon team to allow software to backfill from Mastodon — this pull request has now been approved!

I have been working with both nutomic@lemmy.ml and rimu@piefed.social to allow software to backfill from Lemmy and Piefed, respectively. (Lemmy PR, Piefed issue)

This marks a major milestone in the adoption of conversational contexts. With Mastodon on board backfill will be possible with the majority of the microblogiverse. With Lemmy and Piefed on board, backfill will be possible with the majority of the threadiverse.

Remember that pfefferle@mastodon.social was an early adopter of conversational contexts, and we have been able to backfill from WordPress blogs for quite awhile now (so that's the blogiverse too)

I for one, am eagerly awaiting the next version of all of these softwares!!

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[–] some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (4 children)

For some reason I assumed this was already how the fediverse worked, but I haven't been here very long and it does explain some things, including the "empty" vibe in some lesser-populated places.

This is super exciting for the fediverse and, naturally, I have questions. While this change will mostly bring positives and a better experience for users, there could also be more opportunities for shenanigans.

What considerations are being given to data integrity/mutability and trust? Will all servers that touch a post have a distributed record of all comments and give network confirmation (a la blockchain)? Or does one server (e.g. the originator of each post, or the server with the most resources) act as a single authority of that post? Something else?

Could one server be instructed to "go rogue" and submit bad content to the network, or go on a deletion/overwriting spree that ends up becoming permanent?

What about resources? What impact will backfilling have on your average dude hosting a small instance?

This is just where my mind goes, you see. I'm sure all this and more have been discussed and figured out already. If a public discussion is available to look at, I would love a link!

[–] wakest@piefed.social 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

There have been monthly meetings about this issue and surrounding ones that are open to the public if you really want to know more. There are years worth of discussions about it too but they are very spread around

[–] some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

Thanks!

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