**re: better handling of non-notes by Mastodon**
Toward the end of a day 2 FediForum session,
@Matthias Pfefferle,
@npub1740t...3wtz, and I sidetracked a bit and discussed once again the tendency for implementors to shift away from more suitable ActivityStreams Activities to `as:Note`.
Specifically, it was the demo/session by
@npub1thg9...zq23 re: TrueFans. Instead of federating out an `as:Listen`, they send `as:Note`, and it's a fairly safe bet that this is because the content cannot be richly represented in Mastodon. The same story played out with Mattias and the WordPress plugin, and myself with NodeBB.
Secondly, back in March/April and again in May,
@Renaud Chaput [mentioned that resolving this was of some interest to the Mastodon team](
GitHub
Federation with Bookwyrm (hashtags, reviews) is essentially broken. Β· Issue #29981 Β· mastodon/mastodon
Steps to reproduce the problem Search for https://bookwyrm.social/user/fabiscafe/review/4317797 on your mastodon instanceΒΉ. Open the post you foun...
):
> We will work on improving the display of non-Note content in the next Mastodon version
*To be clear*, getting Mastodon to suitably process `as:Article`/`as:Listen`/`as:Offer` or any number of other activities **is not what the ForumWG wants to accomplish**. It's not up to Mastodon to adapt to the variety of content on the fediverse, but rather that its fallback handling needs to improve _just enough_ so that its baseline rendering is acceptable to more implementors and their users.
As concise and actionable as I can make it:
1. Mastodon allows a subset of HTML for `as:Note`. This subset **is good enough**, but `content` in _non-notes_ has all html stripped. Keep consistency here and allow the same subset of HTML.
1. Non-note `content` is truncated. This is no longer necessary due to the addition of the expand button. The wonderful thing is this standardization of behaviour actually _simplifies_ Mastodon code.
1. Instead of appending the object URL to the status content, promote the "Open Original Page" button out of the overflow menu. It's more than okay to defer to the original site vis-a-vis presentation and allow the user a smooth exit if desired (`target="_top"` would be okay too if you're worried!)
**That's it**.
You could even skip the third point, but even with 1 and 2 achieved this would sufficiently raise the baseline behaviour _just enough_ that I would immediately update NodeBB to send `as:Article` for new topics, and I am certain
@Matthias Pfefferle would adjust his defaults as well.
----
Lastly,
@Renaud Chaput, I'm sure I can speak for everyone at FediForum when I say that it was wonderful to see representatives from Mastodon (that of course includes
@Andy Piper as well) in attendance. It means a lot to me personally that you were there, and sends a signal that Mastodon continues to desire broader inter-compatibility.
) (anyone can make comments for review.)
Monthly meetings are held on the first Thursday of each month, at 1700 to 1800 UTC. You can find them listed in the [SocialCG Calendar](
). The next meeting will be held on 3 October 2024.
We will be continuing onwards with discussions regarding context resolution. Multiple FEPs touch on the subject and there is an opportunity for potential convergence towards a single (or pair) of FEPs that share enough commonalities to allow for interoperability.
As always β time permitting β if you'd like to speak or inquire about a certain topic, comment in the agenda or reply here, the floor is open!
