Following a Lemmy community doesn't bring in new posts (v4.14.2)

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Hello, tried following a Lemmy community (e.g. test@feddit.it) both on my own instance (citiverse.it, v4.14.2) and here on community.nodebb.org, from the category page (/category/test@feddit.it). In both cases the follow seems to go through, but new posts never show up afterwards.

Is this a known issue, or should I dig further and post more details?

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OP

hi and thanks everyone, the issue in topic seems solved and it was on my end: a DNS migration left citiverse.it with an AAAA record while nginx was still listening on IPv4 only, so IPv6-preferring instances couldn’t reach me at all, Lemmy then flagged my server as dead and quietly stopped federating, with zero errors logged anywhere. Adding listen [::]:443 fixed it. Mentioning it only in case it saves someone else an afternoon.

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By “following”, do you mean using the “Follow” button on something that looks like an account profile? That hasn’t worked for several versions now.

You need to Track a Lemmy community as if it were a Category now. Search for test@feddit.it using “In categories” from the drop-down menu on the search page, click on the community, and then click on “Not Watching” and select “Tracking” instead.

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@sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net @kichae@wanderingadventure.party

No, be careful. We have a terminology problem.

@ska said that there are some remote categories on our NodeBB citiverse.it. Among these, for example, is the category https://citiverse.it/category/test@feddit.it, which represents the Lemmy @test@feddit.it community, which can be found at https://feddit.it/c/test.

So the category https://citiverse.it/category/test@feddit.it is none other than the community https://feddit.it/c/test. (In exactly the same way, the category https://activitypub.space/category/fediverse@lemmy.world is none other than the community https://lemmy.world/c/fediverse.)

The problem @ska pointed out is that for a few months now, if a Lemmy or Piefed user publishes a post on https://feddit.it/c/test, the category https://citiverse.it/category/test@feddit.it takes this into account and represents the post. On the other hand, if the post is published by a social media user (mastodon, friendica, etc.) the category doesn’t republish it.

As I already told @julian this is a pretty serious problem, especially since in the past I could at least “move” the conversation manually to the “remote category”; but unfortunately (due to an architectural choice I completely disagree with… oh well! :cry: ), for about ten versions now, it’s no longer possible to “move” conversations to just the local categories.

But it should be clear that the main problem is that my system can no longer categorize social posts published in Lemmy categories!

PS: It seems to be a problem with our instance. In fact, I ran some tests:

1: from mastodon to Piefed https://activitypub.space/topic/6a216416-fa81-49b2-8026-a14feda26556/decentralized-social-media-what-creators-need-to-know-about-web3-platforms

2: from Friendica to lemmy.ml https://activitypub.space/topic/ebca3327-5273-405c-a5e9-0bd31099d684/decentralized-social-media-what-creators-need-to-know-about-web3-platforms

3: From Mastodon to Lemmy.World https://activitypub.space/topic/5a2cce1e-64d1-4061-bab6-7043a157ace8/decentralized-social-media-what-creators-need-to-know-about-web3-platforms

And the activitypub.space nodebb catches them all.

On the other hand, citiverse.it doesn’t catch a single one! :disappointed_relieved: :face_palm:

1: https://citiverse.it/topic/9f8bf755-ffcd-4bbd-9d89-41f5ccac93a5/decentralized-social-media-what-creators-need-to-know-about-web3-platforms

2: https://citiverse.it/topic/7dbfdd67-c46c-4e56-bae6-36ad406fb71d/decentralized-social-media-what-creators-need-to-know-about-web3-platforms

3: https://citiverse.it/topic/4a6b8296-c735-4201-8369-78a5d7d9bfb9/decentralized-social-media-what-creators-need-to-know-about-web3-platforms

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@informapirata indeed, I fixed a number of federation issues between NodeBB and Lemmy, in v4.14.0, and again since. I’d recommend updating to the latest stable version and running those federation tests again.

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In general, moving topics between remote categories is disallowed because it’s misrepresentation. You’re limited to moving uncategorized topics to a local cid, topics between local cids (of course), and cross-posting topics to local categories.

There are some gaps in federation, as @informapirata states. I’ve been actively working toward finding and closing those gaps.

@informapirata @sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net @kichae@wanderingadventure.party

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> @julian said: > > In general, moving topics between remote categories is disallowed because it’s misrepresentation

I respect all your work @julian and admire the fact that you’ve never made a mistake so far. However, regarding moving discussions from one category to a remote category, you’re making a error in your judgment.

I may be the one who’s missing the point, but if you’re available, I can explain in detail all the reasons why allowing the move to a remote category doesn’t inconvenience anyone but has only advantages, while preventing this categorization has only disadvantages.

Let me know if you’d like me to continue my argument. Otherwise, if you think it’s pointless, I won’t continue.

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@informapirata ah! I realize that there may be a difference in understanding here.

I think when you are asking about moving topics to a remote category, you’re intending to also share that discussion to the remote category, yes?

So, for example, you see a good discussion that comes in uncategorized, and you share it with a community on Lemmy.

Yes?

It makes sense, but I am not able to do that from a protocol point of view because there’s inadequate federation vocabulary to achieve this.

So I could make movable, but it won’t show up on Lemmy or Piefed unless that software supports whatever vocab I come up with.

So it’s partly a technical limitation as well.

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@julian Now that our server’s federation issues have been resolved, I’ve finally had the chance to fully appreciate the new crossposting feature. It’s an excellent feature that provides a great user experience for my forum users.

I should add that this feature also solves at least one of the problems that arose from the inability to move threads to remote categories. If I accidentally moved threads from a remote category to a local one, I couldn’t restore the status quo. Today, however, this problem doesn’t arise, because the thread remains (also) in its original category.

So, first of all, I’m wondering if you’d reevaluate my observations and arguments in favor of restoring the feature that allowed a thread to be assigned (at least at the local forum level) to a remote community. And, since the new crossposting feature is better suited to this purpose, if you think it’s possible to direct crossposting (rather than moving) to remote categories as well.

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> @julian said: > > Credo che quando chiedi di spostare un argomento in una categoria remota, intendi anche condividere la discussione in quella categoria remota, giusto?

Yes, but this is what was already happening before.

Of course, the “move” should only be visible on my forum. The move must not (and could not) affect the followers of the original category. It wouldn’t even be right for someone to actually remove a topic from one Lemmy community and move it to a different Lemmy community! And in fact, when I could do this with previous versions of NodeBB, the “move” never affected the federation.

Since I don’t write in English and there could be problems with translation, I’ll try to explain better with an example:

Starting situation:

  1. I administer the citiverse.it forum.
  2. I have decided to “capture” the Lemmy community at https://feddit.it/c/fediverso/
  3. That community will be visible in my forum at the link https://citiverse.it/category/fediverso@feddit.it
  4. From that link, my forum users will be able to publish new posts that will also be read by all followers of https://feddit.it/c/fediverso/
  5. I also decide not to display the communities https://lemmy.lemmy/c/fediverso/ and https://piefed.piefed/c/fediverso/ on my home page.
  6. However, since I want some topics from the communities https://lemmy.lemmy/c/fediverso/ and https://piefed.piefed/c/fediverso/ to be seen by my users, I have decided to “move” the most interesting conversations so that they can be seen within the community. https://citiverse.it/category/fediverso@feddit.it (as it was before)
  7. I know perfectly well that this won’t actually move conversations from feddit.it to lemmy.lemmy, but this way I get several advantages.
  8. First advantage: I can avoid creating a local category https://citiverse.it/category/15/discussioni-sul-fediverso-italiano because I will already have a “remote category” https://citiverse.it/category/fediverso@feddit.it (today, however, if I want to move conversations I am forced to do so in a local category).
  9. Second advantage: if I had two categories on the fediverse, a local category and a community “captured” as a remote category, my users wouldn’t know whether to post on https://citiverse.it/category/15/discussioni-sul-fediverso-italiano or on https://citiverse.it/category/fediverso@feddit.it, and this would divide User contributions on topics will inevitably end up in two different categories.
  10. Third advantage: Furthermore, if my users posted on https://citiverse.it/category/15/discussioni-sul-fediverso-italiano, almost no one would see them, because the Lemmy community https://citiverse.it/category/fediverso@feddit.it has a thousand followers, and I prefer to concentrate the conversations of citiverse.it users in a single community.
  11. Fourth advantage: When I capture a conversation from piefed.piefed and “move” it to my “remote category” https://citiverse.it/category/fediverso@feddit.it, my forum users will reply to the discussion that started in the original remote category.
  12. Fifth advantage: If my citiverse.it NodeBB fails to capture posts that a user has decided to publish on the Lemmy community https://feddit.it/c/fediverso/, I can manually move the conversation, and my users won’t even notice the technical problem.

13: Sixth advantage: my forum will appear more populated with conversations, making it seem less deserted.

As you can see, I don’t want the move to affect the federation, but rather an “optical effect": I want my users to have a better user experience. And I want it to be the same even for those users who don’t know or aren’t interested in learning about the federation.

To recap

The move should be just an optical effect that only my forum users can see.

I hope I explained myself better.

One last thing: it would also be nice if there were some kind of crossposting that would allow me to post a topic both in the original Lemmy community, https://citiverse.it/category/fediverso@lemmy.lemmy, and in the one I wanted to “move” it to, https://citiverse.it/category/fediverso@feddit.it.

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OP

@julian thanks so much for all the work you’ve put into ActivityPub for NodeBB, it’s genuinely appreciated!

Since you mentioned running federation tests again on the latest stable: we’re on 4.14.2 and we’re still seeing a concrete issue.

Symptom: informatica@feddit.it (and, similarly, other remote categories) doesn’t receive native community posts automatically and new posts always end up in World instead of the category, even though the category is being watched locally.

You can see it directly here: https://citiverse.it/category/informatica@feddit.it : posts there are stuck since June 21st, but https://feddit.it/c/informatica gets several new posts every day, and if we search for them on citiverse.it they do show up, just filed under World instead of Informatica.

Is this one of the gaps you’re already tracking? And is there anything worth checking on our end (settings, logs) before assuming it’s core-side and happy to pull whatever diagnostic info would help.

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You’re in luck, I’ve learned a thing or two about this.

NodeBB categories do not follow activitypub group actors. Form category actors are not community groups and so aren’t really compatible. NodeBB follows account style actors and remove group posts are not imported the same as local posts.

In order to get group support working on a wide variety of platforms, the software needs to have a wide variety of dialects that it knows how to deal with.

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