Post
I've seen an ongoing debate between "Note" versus "Article" in ActivityPub / ActivityStreams.
When is something a "Note"‽
When is something an "Article"‽
Personally — I would probably have made the distinction this way.
An "Article" has a title.
A "Note" doesn't have a title.
(In ActivityPub / ActivityStreams, a 'title' seems to tend to get represented in the "name" field.)
Just don't set as:sensitive with summary because that'll trigger a content warning!
@thisismissem ironically, I am debating rolling back the summary generation logic for NodeBB because sending the first 500 chars means fewer people go off-site to read the rest of the post.
I was able to get much more engagement by sending the entire darn thing in summary.
@reiver I don't think there really are any articles in the #fediverse. There are links, but the texts themselves are read through URIs.
@khleedril@cyberplace.social there absolutely are!
Any NodeBB topic over 500 characters is an article with a title, and federates out as the Article type.
Mastodon gets a sub-500 character summary, and displays that.
Some of that is more about Mastodon, than the Fediverse.
Mastodon doesn't give you the text of an Article, but instead gives you a link to it.
But, at this machine-level (in the ActivityPub / ActivityStreams data), the content is there for both Notes and Articles.
Mastodon just treats them differently.
@reiver@mastodon.social Mastodon can, and that's what the long form text FEP enables.
If you set a summary, Mastodon will faithfully show it, even for Article types.
@khleedril @reiver that's not true at all. Every post from @writefreely and @WordPress (with federation turned on) federates the whole post. It's just that mastodon doesn't render the post it self but most other fediverse servers do.
@reiver@mastodon.social that's a good summary for it.
@reiver it is a good question. It is also a question that is formulated from the perspective on how we currently see the AS/AP fediverse.
> I've seen an ongoing debate between "Note" versus "Article" in #ActivityPub / #ActivityStreams.
> When is something a "Note"‽
> When is something an "Article"‽
The question makes sense from the notion of what the current #fediverse is. It makes less sense from the context of AS/AP as described in the protocol specs.
Background to my post is this observation: https://social.coop/@smallcircles/116109447243110037
Then the answer to when is something a Note or an Article is: Always. Note is Note in ActivityStreams and Article is Article.
The question that you would be asking, if only we had a fediverse that followed the original promise of the open standards, is:
> "When is something a Note or an Article in a Microblogging domain?"
For instance.. types you have in any domain depend on your model preferences. Could be anything that serves needs of a solution.
In the old blogging software I created back in the 1990s, I had a handful of posts types
There was a type of rich-text oriented post that had a title. (Article)
And, there way another type of rich-text oriented post that did not have a title. (Note)
(There were also other types of posts, but they aren't relevant here)
These 2 types of posts were rendered / displayed differently
I.e., my 1990s software already had this distinction
@reiver there's a page on this in the primer:
https://www.w3.org/wiki/Activity_Streams/Primer/Article_and_Note
But it's not always clear.
One thing that might distinguish is presentation.
I expect an Article to appear on its own page. References to an Article in a stream or tree layout might just include title and summary, with a link to a UI to show the full text.
But lots of Note objects can fit in a stream or tree presentation.
