Navigating reply threads? -

System Apps

Directory Help Language

Like Us QRator Random Channel Report Bug Search

Support Hubzilla

Navigating reply threads?

Sun, 13 Oct 2024 18:33:28 +0200

Hubzilla Support Forum

adminsforum@hubzilla.org

dynamic_hubzilla wrote the following post Sun, 13 Oct 2024 18:33:28 +0200

Navigating reply threads?

I know I've asked about this previously, but I'm having a hell of a time figuring how how to tell which comments in a conversation are responses to which other comments. I thought there was supposed to be a little black arrow linking to the parent comment, but I'm not seeing it, at least not in conversations in this forum.

Help?

show all 15 comments

Sun, 13 Oct 2024 20:17:18 +0200

sk@hub.utsukta.org

you can see the arrows on the top right corner of comments that are linked. You won't see them on single comemnts only the ones that are in reply to another comment.

Screenshot showing rtwo comments, a parent and a child with arrows which navigate between them

Sun, 13 Oct 2024 21:36:58 +0200

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

One of the reasons why I fell in love with (streams)' threaded conversation view.

Mon, 14 Oct 2024 15:54:41 +0200

dynamic_hubzilla

dynamic@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Saiwal

Thanks. I saw those, but they were labeled as "previous comment" which was ambiguous, and there aren't clear visual cues of parental relationships within subthreads, so I wasn't confident. I'd *really* prefer nested indentation (e.g. https://euphoria.leet.nu/room/welcome/), but I guess I can get used to this.

It's not *obviously* weirder than Mastodon/Twitter threads.

Mon, 14 Oct 2024 16:01:31 +0200

sk@hub.utsukta.org

@dynamic_hubzilla I agree, nested threads would be much more intuitive, I think it can be implemented but will need to look into how hubzilla stores comments and such. Currently i dont understand hubzilla well enough but i'm slowly learning and will hopefully be able to contribute.

Mon, 14 Oct 2024 17:06:54 +0200

_jayrope

jrp@hub.kliklak.net

@Saiwal @dynamic_hubzilla This could eventually be solved with CSS - these arrows seem to indicate such a possibility.

Sent to the #Fediverse from a #Hubzilla instance.

Mon, 14 Oct 2024 17:32:04 +0200

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@_jayrope Or, since Hubzilla is already taking over (streams) code, with that. (streams) has a tree-style thread view by default which can be switched to Hubzilla's single-level chronological view.

Mon, 14 Oct 2024 17:41:11 +0200

_jayrope

jrp@hub.kliklak.net

@Jupiter Rowland Jupiter, having both options would be a dream - but who can adopt that code now? @Saiwal @dynamic_hubzilla

Sent to the #Fediverse from a #Hubzilla instance.

Mon, 14 Oct 2024 18:33:53 +0200

dynamic_hubzilla

dynamic@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Jupiter Rowland

If (streams) defaults to nested indents that might be another nudge toward me going with (streams) rather than Hubzilla long term.

Your previous reference to (streams) instances getting broken is pretty worrying, though. At some point I'll want more information on this.

CC: @_jayrope

Mon, 14 Oct 2024 18:57:53 +0200

Der Pepe (Hubzilla) ⁂ ⚝

pepecyb@hub.hubzilla.hu

@dynamic_hubzilla

Simply put, Streams was Mike's working environment to continue his vision of Fediverse software after Hubzilla. It has no brand name (‘Streams’ is just the name of the repository) and no logo. But because it was installable and usable, the installation was called ‘(streams)’ (WITH the brackets, they are part of it).

Mike's vision was that programmers would use the repo and make something of their own from it, develop it further and (but this was not an obligation) return their developments if necessary (as I said, not obligatory...). he deliberately made the repo available as ‘public domain’). He also used it to submit his ideas for further developments.

Unfortunately, however, nobody really participated. It was installed on a few servers as an instance (often referred to as ‘Y’)... but no one contributed to the repo or really did anything of their own with it.

A few weeks ago Mike gave up. He announced that he would no longer be working on Streams and discontinued further development. He forked it and is now developing Forte on the basis of ActivityPub, which is far from being a version for productive use. From time to time he still makes bug fixes in the Streams repo, but he is no longer actively working on it. Unfortunately, nobody else is really working on it either, let alone finding a team to make something of it. There are a few forks, but I haven't seen any real progress so far.

But that's no wonder. Streams is a very complex piece of software... and familiarising yourself with the logic and system is really not easy. Especially as the documentation is almost non-existent.

I assume that (streams) will be history in the foreseeable future. I wouldn't recommend anyone to install an instance because it currently looks like a dead end (I closed my instance at the end of last month). I don't know whether things will develop differently with Forte. I'm just afraid that not everything you're used to from Hubzilla and (streams) will work there either, because Zot has been kicked out and now only relies on AP.

Because Hubzilla and (streams) are nevertheless closely related and have a common family tree, it should be possible to transfer certain features from the streams repo to Hubzilla. However, this needs helpers who might take care of it (familiarising yourself with Hubzilla as far as development is concerned is not really easy either... I've been familiarising myself with it for a while now, and I'm a long way from being able to really contribute anything meaningful). In any case, Hubzilla is being actively developed and a really helpful and friendly community has emerged. It's running, bugs are being fixed, it's being developed further and people are helping you.

---
Sent by a #Hubzilla instance to the #Fediverse

Mon, 14 Oct 2024 19:16:29 +0200

dynamic_hubzilla

dynamic@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Der Pepe (Hubzilla) ⁂ ⚝, for some reason I don't seem to be able to reply to your comment directly, but this was an *extremely* useful explainer, and I want to say thank you.

I had really been under the impression that (streams) was the new Hubzilla and that I was behind the curve in checking out Hubzilla at this stage, but it sounds like I'm in exactly the right place.

I guess that as of a couple years ago Mike MacGirvin was still trying to promote (streams) as the way to go but that it didn't work as hoped...?

Tue, 15 Oct 2024 00:32:36 +0200

Bill Statler

billstatler@forum.statler.ws

@dynamic_hubzilla - I've been using (streams) since shortly after it was released. Der Pepe's explanation agrees with my impressions.

It was never supposed to be a replacement for Hubzilla. The way I remember it, Mike wanted to build a tool that would be easier for both admins and users, so that anyone with a bit of technical expertise could set up a (streams) instance for their family or friends or other small groups. It would run on an inexpensive shared hosting account, the default settings would be suitable for most users, and the really complicated settings were hidden in add-ons or hard-to-find pages, so that they were available if needed but wouldn't confuse new users. There were several user interface improvements, such as the nested indents and bulk import/export of contacts lists.

But (streams) was also a testbed for new technology, especially in 2024 when Mike developed a way to handle "nomadic stuff" using ActivityPub. He made a lot of complex changes, and of course there were bugs, and not all of them have been squashed yet. This is where he could have really used some help from a few more skilled programmers -- but unfortunately, (streams) never attracted any users who had both the skills and the time to help out.

Tue, 15 Oct 2024 09:37:08 +0200

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@dynamic_hubzilla @dynamic_hubzilla Yeah, that's interesting actually.

I mean, first of all, on New Year's Eve 2022, Mike discontinued the three experimental projects Osada (the third one under that name), Mistpark 2022 (also known as Misty) and Redmatrix 2022, his most recent project Roadhouse and even Zap which had officially been pronounced stable. This made (streams) appear to be the be-all, end-all post-Hubzilla server software and therefore stable.

Actually, the original idea behind (streams) was for it to mainly be a base for other people's projects. Instead of developing software based on ActivityPub from scratch and then only with a lack-lustre feature set, they should be able to fork the streams repository and build something cool on top of it. That was one of the reasons why it has no name and no brand identity, and it was the reason why it was released into the public domain.

The other reason why it has no name and no brand identity, and the reason why almost the entire nodeinfo code was removed, is because Mike strongly dislikes brand fetishism. That's also the reason for the forks before it.

I mean, back in 2020, I understood the situation with the Zot8 development projects as follows: Next to stable Zap, there was Misty (Mistpark 2020) which was a kind of semi-stable testing release. It was for those who wanted new cool features before Zap would receive them without the risk of the whole thing blowing up underneath you due to being too experimental. Osada (the third one already) was the unstable, bleeding-edge one for early development. It was for those who weren't afraid of the bleeding edge, and who wanted cool new features even earlier. Redmatrix 2020 was even more bleeding-edge and had ActivityPub off server-side by default so that it wouldn't stand in the way of Zot8 development.

Actually, however, the only difference between the three was the branding, and their code was identical all the time. As an admin, you could switch between all three and Zap back and forth at any time by rebasing your server. Well, and then, in early 2021, came Roadhouse which, I think, was launched to develop Zot11 which was to become Nomad (current Nomad would be Zot12 if it still was Zot). I mean, Mike could just as well have used one of the three existing projects for that, right? He openly admitted that the reason why there were Zap, Osada, Misty, Redmatrix and Roadhouse next to each other was to confuzzle the brand fetishists.

Then, in October, the streams repository came. What was in it has no name, it has no logo, it has no brand identity, and it is not even a project. Instances of it do not have a fixed identifier like "mastodon" or "friendica" or "hubzilla" or "zap". They can identify as whatever you want them to identify as, be it "Get Ready To Rumbly" or "Y" (because Y is not X, get it?) or "Diversi Spiritus" or "Bunny of Doom"; many instances simply have their name doubling as an identifier. Another scheme to confuse the brand fetishists, especially after Mike discontinued Zap, Osada, Misty, Redmatrix 2020 and Roadhouse on New Year's Eve 2022, telling admins of instances of these to switch to the streams repository.

It must have been in 2023 that Mike started actively advertising (streams) in the Fediverse not as a "Fediverse pastry case" to build something on top, but as as what the Fediverse should actually be rather than what Mastodon makes it. In comparison, Friendica, the Red Matrix, Hubzilla and Zap had always run on "if you build it, they will come", word-of-mouth and perchance search engine encounters.

And, to be fair, pre-July 2024 (streams) was a rock-solid daily driver. And in comparison with Hubzilla, it's easier to get into. Especially the permission management is optimised and streamlined although permission roles (ex contact roles) still can't forbid what the channel-wide settings (ex channel role) allows, and (streams) makes even more of a point of being privacy-first by defaulting to private channels. Also, (streams) doesn't clobber newbies over the head with as many features.

The reason why it was so poorly adopted was simple: At most, it was the Hubzilla users who knew that (streams) exists and who could at least roughly estimate what (streams) can do. And the latter was generalised to "(streams) can do less than Hubzilla", what with all the stuff that was cut in 2018 when Osada and Zap were made.

There was hardly any incentive to switch from Hubzilla to something newer if you had to sacrifice features such as diaspora* connectivity, articles or the wiki engine. Either you actually needed one of these, or you could imagine they might be useful at some point. Between 2019, when Zap had no serious drawbacks anymore, and today, only few people jumped ships and never looked back.

I mean, (streams) does have quite a few nice advantages; I should know, I've got two (streams) side channels myself. As I've already said, permission handling is improved in several ways, probably also to keep people from going full public on a channel level already. Posts, comments and DMs support BBcode and Markdown and HTML at the same time; on Hubzilla, you have to pick one even for webpages, you have to pick one out of two for entire wikis, and otherwise, you only have BBcode by default. (streams) can make Mastodon blank sensitive images out by using the hashtag #nsfw or #sensitive. I've wanted to get this feature into Hubzilla, but to no avail. Also, and this has been around since immediately after Hubzilla: There's still a page with a list of all Fediverse instances known to an instance, it can be filtered by "instance type", and it can take you straight to an instance's sign-on form if joining is allowed. Lastly, the handling of non-nomadic connections has been improved, and since ActivityPub is built into the core now rather than an app, it's on for new channels by default.

But next to nobody on Hubzilla knows, only those who also use (streams), and they don't talk about it much. Hence, everyone else thinks (streams) is Hubzilla with stuff removed, and that's all.

What really came to bite the (streams) users was the introduction of decentralised IDs as per FEP-ef61. They were first tested on the nomadic branch. But then the nomadic branch was merged with the dev branch, and in July, this dev branch with early nomadic stuff in it was merged with release. What must have worked reasonably well under lab conditions suddenly went haywire in daily use: As (streams) suddenly had to handle even more identifiers for everything, it confused them, and next to no federation worked anymore whatsoever. This was eventually ironed out, but (streams) still seems to be plagued with issues ever since.

This may also have been amongst the reasons why Forte was forked from the streams repository in August, namely to get rid of the Nomad-specific and Zot6-specific identifiers and concentrate on ActivityPub. Okay, another reason was because, to Mike's chagrin, the Fediverse apparently demanded a project that's actually a project with a name and a brand identity and full-blown nodeinfo. Forte has all of these again, and I'm pretty sure that when it takes off, both Fediverse Observer and FediDB will adopt it, also because unlike (streams), its instances can be detected and identified by run-of-the-mill crawlers.

And I must admit that it's quite difficult to advertise (streams). When I come across a Mastodon user who's dissatisfied with Mastodon, I have to peddle to them something that isn't a project with no name and no brand identity. On top of everything, neither FediDB nor Fediverse Observer nor The Federation lists any instances, and the only existing instance lists are on (streams) themselves. So if you want to find instances, you need to find an instance first, or someone has to tell you about one. I've read about at least one case of someone wanting to try out (streams) but not doing it because they simply couldn't find any instances.

By the way, there's a general (streams) forum in case someone is interested: @Streams.

Tue, 15 Oct 2024 09:52:28 +0200

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Bill Statler

This is where he could have really used some help from a few more skilled programmers -- but unfortunately, (streams) never attracted any users who had both the skills and the time to help out.

And this really is the main problem currently: It's hard to find someone who could take over the streams repository or at least help maintain it.

I guess you would, and you know the post-Hubzilla world pretty well since you've joined Zap, but you'd first have to teach yourself software development in general and PHP specifically after having taught yourself git. I think Waitman is willing and able, but lacking time. And the pool of active (streams) users doesn't extend that much further.

In fact, even if you look around Hubzilla and even Friendica, I think there aren't many people who'd be fit for this task. Those who are are already involved in Friendica or Hubzilla development, and even Hubzilla could use some more coders to keep this behemoth in shape. Guess why Mike threw so much stuff out when he made Osada and Zap and even more on the way to today's (streams).

So if you should manage to find someone with enough time and enough skills to help out here, they'd first have to learn what (streams) is, what it's like, why it is the way it is, why "they" didn't make it more like Mastodon, why it really shouldn't be more like Mastodon etc. Essentially, they'd first have to daily-drive (streams) for a while to understand it. That'd take time, and as long as (streams) has its performance issues in conjunction with ActivityPub, I don't really feel like reeling in any new users.

Sure, they may not notice any of it because the only place where you could reasonably try (streams) is Waitman's unstoppable juggernaut instance Rumbly. But once someone decides to run their own private instance on, what, a VPS or a Raspi or something, they're probably in for unpleasant surprises. And I don't know what Waitman would say about dozens of new users trying to get onto his instance.

Tue, 15 Oct 2024 10:17:39 +0200 last edited: Tue, 15 Oct 2024 11:12:56 +0200

𝓒𝓱𝓻𝓲𝓼

chris@im.allmendenetz.de

to make a long story short:
Hubzilla is constructed as a CMS - so not just for decentralized network postings but for all kind for content - also for such which do not federate.
Hubzilla is well maintained in this sense and will get even the most significant updates for social networking:

https://hub.somaton.com/item/52601ece-7e57-418d-9ca9-893343a8f342

Now Streams is "just" focused on tools for posting in a decentralizes network. Since the used standards for decentralized networks are a moving target steams has now become an other project which had to given up in favor to get all the features which are impotent for Miki into the future of decentralized networking.

AP is constantly enhanced so Miki finally tries to get all of his visions into this protocol and gives up his own creations Zot and Nomad.
Finally there will be Forte - a derivative of Friendica- Hubzilla- Streams and so on working just with AP.

Fri, 08 Nov 2024 19:50:12 +0100

od@zotum.net

Useful conversation to read.
The central theme seems to be repeated failure, primarily of human relations.
There is no purpose to good tools (that is _all_ software is!), without a community to use those tools for further development.