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   Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 00:19:21 JST Evan Prodromou

   • Steve Bate

   @steve Hi! I got rate-limited on socialhub, so I figured I'd try to engage you here.

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 00:36:38 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Steve Bate

     @steve I was interested in your questions on socialhub about typing for Activity Streams objects.

     I agree, the type system in JSON-LD is difficult to use.

     There's also a real tension between using standards and making extensions. I think we did OK with AS2 and AP, but it's not always easy.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 00:37:17 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Steve Bate

     @steve I found your idea for extending OrderedCollection absolutely wild. I don't think any of us considered it when making the spec. What's the use case?

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 01:25:12 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Steve Bate

     @steve oh, interesting. I think the best you can do there is multiple values in the type property.

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     Steve Bate (steve@social.technoetic.com)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 01:25:13 JST Steve Bate

     in reply to

     @evan I was thinking about it from the perspective of creating a generic test suite and being able to automatically determine the subtype. With an OWL ontology, I could do that, but a JSON-LD context isn't enough to know the type relationships. However, I can imagine that someone might extend the AP OrderedCollection to include the sort criteria, for example. It's reverse chrono, but the key is not specified (receive time?, send time?, authors birthday? ;-)).

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 01:30:24 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Steve Bate

     @steve ah. So, this isn't about actual implementation, but more noodling. That sets a good context!

     Why should the sender determine the ordering of the items in the inbox?!?!

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     Steve Bate (steve@social.technoetic.com)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 01:30:25 JST Steve Bate

     in reply to

     @evan I've also been wondering about the feasibility of having multiple inboxes with filtered OrderedCollections (just brainstorming). The OrderedCollection subtype would include the filtering criteria that a sender could use to select the proper inbox. This seems like it would be spec-compliant since inbox is not a functional property.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 01:33:53 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Steve Bate

     @steve perfectly reasonable to add other properties for other views on that collection.

     With pump.io, for example, we have "major" and "minor" inboxes, so you can see the important stuff (creating new image) and filter out the unimportant stuff (likes, shares, follows, unfollows).

     I think it'd be interesting to add some additional properties for other streams.

     In general, if you want to do new things, make new properties. Fucking around with existing properties is a bad idea.

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     Steve Bate (steve@social.technoetic.com)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 01:33:54 JST Steve Bate

     in reply to

     @evan Just curious, why did AP restrict the AS2 OrderedCollection to be *only* reverse chrono? The AS2 type seems more useful since collections might be ordered by priority, popularity, alphabetically or whatever.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 01:51:33 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Steve Bate

     @steve I guess I need a more concrete example, because I'm not following your motivation.

     When someone is posting to an inbox or outbox, it doesn't seem to be important how the stuff that's already there is sorted.

     Sorting seems more important when you're reading a collection. "Give me the latest Activity for each person in my Family list, in alphabetical order by name."

     But everything should go in through the main inbox.

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     Steve Bate (steve@social.technoetic.com)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 01:51:34 JST Steve Bate

     in reply to

     @evan I mentioned the sender in the context of the inbox filtering/routing (and maybe for the outbox in C2S?). This is similar to what you described for pump.io. It's a good question related to the ordering criteria. The collection consumer (vs the sender) might not care *how* a collection is ordered, just that it is.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 02:49:48 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Steve Bate

     @steve so, you're reading the requirement that OrderedCollection objects in AP have to be reverse chronological order applies not only to the properties defined in the AP spec, but to **all** properties in any document used in AP, even if they're defined as an extension?

     That seems like an incorrect reading of the intent of the spec.

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     Steve Bate (steve@social.technoetic.com)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 02:49:49 JST Steve Bate

     in reply to

     @evan Yes, I agree. It would be more important when reading a collection. I’m sorry that I wasn’t communicating clearly.

     Your family list example is interesting. Given the AP reverse chrono ordering restriction on OrderedCollection, it seems like a different subtype of ordered Collection would be needed to return an alphabetically sorted collection.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 03:13:14 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • https://rhiaro.co.uk/
     • Christine Lemmer-Webber
     • Erin 💽
     • Steve Bate
     • Jessica

     @steve I think so?

     Otherwise, it would really stifle any kind of experimentation. I might want to put an OrderedCollection of my top ten favourite movies as a property of my Person object. It would be unreasonable for AP to require that it be in reverse chronological order.

     @cwebber @erincandescent @tsyesika
     @rhiaro

     Am I off here?

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     Steve Bate (steve@social.technoetic.com)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 03:13:15 JST Steve Bate

     in reply to

     @evan Maybe so. So AP only requires the reverse chrono ordering for OrderedCollections used specifically for the inbox and outbox? Maybe I did misread that. I’ll go back and review it. Thanks for the clarification.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 03:44:37 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Steve Bate

     @steve I mean "documents" as in "JSON files" not as in "specification documents".

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     Steve Bate (steve@social.technoetic.com)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 03:44:43 JST Steve Bate

     in reply to

     @evan However, I didn’t understand your statement about all properties in any AP document. I am thinking the reverse chrono ordering applies to Object ordering in an OrderedCollection. The property or properties used for sorting keys aren’t specified. Also from Section 5, “What property is used to determine the reverse chronological order is intentionally left as an implementation detail.”

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     Steve Bate (steve@social.technoetic.com)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 03:44:48 JST Steve Bate

     in reply to

     @evan I was thinking all AP OrderedCollections have the reverse chrono ordering restriction because Section 5 states “An OrderedCollection MUST be presented consistently in reverse chronological order.” This is in the general context of collections rather than specifically for the inbox or outbox.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 03:58:32 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Steve Bate

     @steve anyway, I think it's perfectly fine to use OrderedCollection objects in extension properties that aren't in reverse chronological order.

     Here's an example of using a priorityInbox to sort activities by priority instead of reverse chron:

     https://gist.github.com/evanp/7cf38dbe7a4a8a8d56e92a8ff68df044

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 04:07:15 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • https://rhiaro.co.uk/

     @rhiaro I don't know if a revision is needed. Maybe just a clarifying note somewhere.

   • Embed this notice
     https://rhiaro.co.uk/ (rhiaro@toot.cat)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 04:07:16 JST https://rhiaro.co.uk/

     in reply to

     • Christine Lemmer-Webber
     • Erin 💽
     • Steve Bate
     • Jessica

     @evan @steve @cwebber @erincandescent @tsyesika Having re-read the spec, I agree that's ambiguous and could be tightened up. I definitely don't think applying that rule to all OrderedCollections was intended though.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 04:07:49 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • https://rhiaro.co.uk/

     @rhiaro also, HI

   • Embed this notice
     Steve Bate (steve@social.technoetic.com)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 04:40:35 JST Steve Bate

     in reply to

     @evan I like the priorityInbox example. Those objects would still need the OrderedCollection "type" property, right?

     Now that I've learned reverse chrono is not a blanket requirement for AP OrderedCollection, it opens up many possibilities (and makes more sense, in general).

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 04:40:35 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Steve Bate

     @steve I added types to inbox and priorityInbox.

     https://gist.github.com/evanp/7cf38dbe7a4a8a8d56e92a8ff68df044

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 04:44:01 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Steve Bate

     @steve anyway, I'm glad to hear that you don't need a backwards-incompatible breaking change to get what you need here!

     Can I ask, how was this related to the question about how to identify an Activity object? They seem orthogonal.