ether+nick

@evan

To me it is very sad this shift to fragmented microblog being the source of truth to discuss de-facto standards and upcoming potential post-facto interoperabiliy tech debt, in a communication medium where only you and I may ever read our discussion, and it is gone in timeline history the next day.

@evan

What is app-centric. Mastodon is one example, but all increments to 'what constitutes fedi' come from app development, where post-facto interoperability takes place.

So Peertube at the time they extended AP were the first to do so in a Video domain, and could freely define AP types and props. Choose them for best-fit with their app.

The next Video app builder then has a choice. "Do I follow that? But it is so peertube specific. Do I want to include their namespace in all my messages and then add my own app-specific namespace for the new props I introduce that maps to my app's features best?"

This is a Grassroots standardization process thingy where ideally..

- Peertube being first is free to extend.

- When the next app dev comes in that business / application domain we weigh the impact, perhaps conclude no coordination is needed yet.

- When more apps come, there's need to formulate a standardize approach. Consolidate protocol decay, and rebalance specs with wire reality.

@evan

There are more aspects to evolution. When I use the word, it is from the full scope and against the principles of SX methodology I am working on, which holistically considers the entirety of the ecosystem as a whole.

The fediverse ecosystem evolved to have most day to day conversation on microblog channels.

But if those are ephemeral and fleety, fragmented, where before the discussions on more cohesive commucation hubs that kept an archive of what was said in one place, from that perspective and measured against power that is now lost, one may conclude devolution to place in hindsight.

@evan

It is both protocol decay as well as "misconception" in the way Rich Hickey meant in his Hammock Driven Development talk.

The longer such practices are allowed to exist, the more inertia and reluctance to there is to come to better practices, and the question about evolution is again Im Frage.

"Look we all have bio profile processors in our apps, and now you are telling us to drop that, just to make it look more like activitypub? We can see that it may be an improvement, but this is a past station now."

@evan

What I thought to do the other day we had the discussion, but didn't have time for, was create the hypotethical future Mastodon profile of my account, where some technical construct of tags took all the available profile bio characters leaving just enough to say "Hi, I am Arnold (out or chars)" followed by a combinatorial mismash of app-specific profile-logic I require to have to operate my account on the fedi to work well.

It is protocol decay. AP let's you express that kinda logic, and it was made to convey these things.

@evan

It is not meant that way at all. I mean "any developer's personal choice at time of impl" because the standard allows such versatility. Since in this case you posed it to me its "you as a dev's personal choice". There are 3 options:

1. It is not standardized, everyone is free to choose.
2. There's an informal convention, turning de facto standard.
3. It is formalized, part of the standard.

When saying "protocol decay" I always mean as the IETF doc on it defines it: rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9413.htm

On "evolution". Evolution to where? What are the common goals, the shared vision? When is something evolution vs. devolution if people are hemmed into a de facto standard full of app-specific choices made in the past?

"I can't have more profile fields". Why? Does Linked Data restrict you, or does some app not handle more than N fields? The latter is protocol decay.

I've been tooting about Emergence. Many emergent systems in Nature have no interesting outcome. What fedi is emerging?

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