Talk about ActivityPub, not Mastodon | how would you name it?

Fedora Mastodon
Follow us on Mastodon! This is a great place to stay up to date on the latest in the Fedora community.

Here it must be understood that Mastodon is not the equivalent of Twitter/Facebook “platforms”.

E-mail:
SMTP, protocol
Postfix, SMTP server software (one of many)
Tutanota, email service

ActivityPub:
ActivityPub, protocol
Mastodon, AcitvityPub server software (one of many)
Fosstodon, a social networking service that follows the ActivityPub protocol and uses Mastodon server software (possibly customized)

Matrix:
Matrix, protocol
Synapse, Matrix server software (one of many)
Ossrox, Matrix service

So we should talk about ActivityPub and say:
“Fedora ActivityPub
Follow us on ActivityPub! This is a great place to stay up to date on the latest in the Fedora community.”

Didn’t you explain (correctly) that ActivityPub is a protocol, not a place (site/service)? So, people can follow the Fedora project via ActivityPub (which does not help them find us) or on Fosstodon (which is the service where the Fedora project can be found). They can follow/find us using an arbitrary service, of course, just like they can send e-mails using an arbitrary MUA - to a specific service which the recipient uses.

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And then none, except probably you, understand and follow. The need of being absolutely right on every word we write is not neither required or wanted for us trying to promote fedora.

This is not you talking about you want us to be right, it’s you showing that you have knowledge that others don’t and elevating your ego.

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That’s true and “via ActivityPub” is as fine well, but I remember in the early days of e-mail (when there were several protocols) we talked the same way (not via).

I think Fosstodon shouldn’t be mentioned as per no one says “Send email for me on Gmail”.

Elevating my ego? No, I just want to spread the word about ActivityPub. At ActivityPub the idea is not to have Mastodon, PeerTube, Pixelfed, etc. as separate things. It aims the same with social media as we nowdays have with e-mails.
I really appreciate the Fedora Marketing Team work a lot! As I remember, it was you who woke up the team from slumber, thank you.

If it’s a problem, then add a short explanation or the Mastodon logo, but ActivityPub should be mentioned at least in the title.

https://activitypub.rocks/

And we are back to Mastodon (see the bottom link of your ativitypub.rocks page you posted)

Other user guides found on the web:

Nice we talked about. But in the end it not changes anything about the naming. Would make a big mess explaining the users that Mastodon from now on should be called ActivityPub.

Who knows, in a few years it will be as we talk about a website. We not have to point out that we use https protocol to access it, we just take it for granted. It is a standard today.

Your second and third link go back to what @mjg said: ActivityPub is a protocol that the other sites are built on; not an actual site.

You literally took one of dozen links in one post on the forum and the link was described:

"Other user guides found on the web:

Sorry, but I think that doesn’t proves anything.

You comparing apples and oranges. Mastodon equivalent in WWW is Apache or Nginx, is anyone talking about Apache or Nginx like you speak Mastodon in social networking context? No.

Yes, but also Mastodon is not site or service or platform. It’s just server software. So we have two options: talk about Fosstodon or AcitvityPub. I prefer ActivityPub.

And hey, this is how it’s always been:
Email: In the beginning there was not just SMTP or POP3 and then you often couldn’t say “I’ll email you”, you had to speak by protocol name. When SMTP/POP3 came de-facto standards, we started talking about email.
Web: Web is not communication (like messages and mails) and therefore a bit different. It consists of HTTP and HTML at the same time. Fortunately, it was immediately called the World Wide Web and from the beginning we talked websites.
XMPP(Jabber)/Matrix: We still talk protocol names, but when they become de-facto (EU’s DMA maybe), we start talking about instant messaging.
ActivityPub: We still talk protocol name, but someday we start talking about social networking.

At beginning, we always talk about protocol names, because protocol forms platform. When the protocol becomes de-facto standard, we end up talking by common names (email, instant messaging, social networking).
What else we could even talk about? Gmail (email) and Amazon.com (web)?

If we talk only about Mastodon, it slows the change to fair, non-walled-garden social networking/social media and ignores other big ActivityPub softwares like Pixelfed. And anyway, from the user’s point of view, which server software is used is unrelevant info. In fact, many AcitivityPub services, like Librem Social (powered by Mastodon), hide the name of the software.

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@moderators can this post please be tagged appropriately (with, for example, marketing-team tags) instead of the websites-and-apps-team that this post has little to do with? Thanks!

I did put it in to the water cooler … it is just a nitpicking topic

Thanks, @ilikelinux! :smiley:

Please put this to marketing-team. Nitpicking topic?

Almost all of your posts since you joined 1 week ago have been nitpicky (even if 1 of them did lead to useful action).

But don’t let anyone stop you. We could definitely use your enthusiasm for picking nits. May I suggest, if you have the time, to look over Docs? Tons of nits to pick there—grammar, inconsistent style, broken links, outdated info. You can have a much larger and immediate impact on Fedora by picking those nits.

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I think this is your personal meaning. And it is not Fedora Linux specific. Such topics we normally discuss in the water-cooler section as an off topic. Wen needed we can put it back wherever we want it to have.

Please do not forget that we use the Discourse as a tool for daily tasks. And in special the Project Discussion Section we also use the tags as specifier for teams. There it is important that you know in which section it belongs to not disturb other teams workflow. I guess that’s why @t0xic0der asked to move it in a other section alias out of the team tag he uses too.

I do find it as a privilege that we do have direct access to the professionals and their tools of RedHat even more we need take care that we not disturb their daily business.

Please also check out the Start Here section!

I will change also the title to propose a naming like | how would you name it? Who knows probably some smart comment here will write History with a good proposal :wink:

I do start to propose

My ShorteN Adresses would be:
@Ilikelinux@shorty.org (fictive address) &
Ilikelinux (@ilikelinux@mstdn.social) - Mastodon 🐘

ShorteN stands for > “to shorten” if shorty org would exist I would name the message as a shorty instead of a tweet.

ShorteN written with two capital letters means ShorteN Social Network decentralized :partying_face:

Hi folks. I am locking this topic because I think the conversation is steering toward misunderstandings and I believe there are better ways for us to use our passion and energy for advocating for Fedora. :fedora: If you feel that there is more to discuss about ActivityPub, I suggest creating a new topic and let’s start the discussion with a more specific goal in mind.

I think there are opportunities to educate people about the underlying protocols behind what goes into our everyday social media and technology tools. Mastodon and other decentralized platforms have interesting technology decisions behind them that make them more unique than traditional social media. If there is energy and passion for doing this, then we should look at coming up with creative ways of talking about how Fedora uses these technologies.

We have some recordings from the Fedora Linux 38 release party coming out soon, and @joseph did a great session about the Fedora Mastodon. Promoting that seems like a good place to start from. :eyes:

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