Okay, five and a half.

All in all, I'd say #microblogpub is going pretty well. I don't use it very often (which is definitely a different thing from not writing a lot, which is how I phrased that at first), but hey, it's essentially my first blog/microblog, considering I was never all that prolific on the birdsite either.

On terminology, and the effects of being a Fediverse instance with Indieweb features

On New Year's Eve, I noticed an issue that was posted to the #microblogpub project in November about the ability to like/reply/share content that isn't an ActivityPub object. I'd already determined that I could include simple HTML markup in my posts, so that led me to speculate that since the software automatically sends webmentions where applicable, I ought to be able to post an Indieweb-style response to any URL if I wanted already - I just have to write the microformats myself. So I tried it, and it worked; I confirmed that it sent a webmention and the site in question recognized it as a "like."

To my Fediverse followers, on the other hand...what I posted looks like a note with a URL and a few tags.

Now, it's not as if that's an inherently unreasonable thing to post. Seems to me I've seen plenty of people post or tweet a link to an article and maybe a few tags or words of context. But it's very much different from a "like" in the context of the fediverse. If I like a Fediverse object, the original poster gets notified of it, and at least in some cases the general public can go look at the original object and see who has liked it, but it doesn't appear on my profile or in my followers' timelines. It's public, but less public.

The appearance to the Fediverse if I manually post an Indieweb reply, reacji, or favorite is going to be pretty similar. Essentially, if I want to respond in an Indieweb way to something that isn't an ActivityPub object, or where the Indieweb concept of that response isn't the same as the Fediverse concept, then the Fediverse is going to see it as a note I posted with a link in it, ranging (in terms of what's there besides the link) anywhere from one unicode character (for a reacji) to a few paragraphs apparently addressed to the link's author (for a reply).

If I ever do an Indieweb "repost" of something that isn't an ActivityPub object, I would probably actually only post the link and maybe a short quote and possibly a brief comment on why I'm reposting it - posting the entirety of someone else's content on my site isn't something I think I'd do outside the context of ActivityPub reposts, where it's an established practice. The result would therefore look kind of like a "quote tweet;" or perhaps very much like an Indieweb-style reply, except with my comment seeming to be addressed to the general public rather than the author.

Bookmarks are even more odd, because a Fediverse bookmark is basically private, and an Indieweb one is not...but the end result is still that the Fediverse would basically see it as posting a link.

Part of what makes some of these things seem odd to me is the contrast I perceive between how this blog works and how I gather the websites of some of the folks I chat with work.

#Microblogpub is, as its documentation leads off, "A self-hosted, single-user, ActivityPub powered microblog." Reading a little farther down, it "Implements the ActivityPub server to server protocol" and "Exposes your ActivityPub profile as a minimalist microblog" (what it exposes is arguably more like the local timeline, in my opinion) with a "Dedicated section for articles/blog posts."

Now, some folks syndicate some of their content to a separate Fediverse account the same way they might syndicate to Twitter or various other silos. That's a whole different approach. As a matter of fact, I didn't realize it until I was writing this, but some of the responses shown on the article I Indieweb-liked via webmention as a proof of concept (several paragraphs ago) were actually replies and boosts and likes from the author posting a link to the article on Mastodon.

But some people use plugins for Wordpress or other CMSes, or software they wrote for themselves, to make their blogs act as Fediverse presences. Some use platforms that support that directly, like micro.blog. And some use Bridgy Fed to get that functionality as a service. Some of them display Fediverse replies as comments on their blogs and some don't. But I have the impression - whether it is accurate or not - that most of these other approaches may either configure whether to federate for different post types, or offer the option at time of publication (or possibly even afterward). Microblog.pub, on the other hand, doesn't currently have the option not to federate, because it's ActivityPub-driven to begin with and uses ActivityPub-style post visibility.

Take this article, for example. I can make it public, which means it goes to my Articles page and is sent to my followers' timelines. I can make it unlisted, which means anyone can read it but it's not in my articles listing (if it were a note, it wouldn't appear on the homepage), but it does appear in my profile as viewed on another instance, and anyone can access it by the permalink...and it goes to my followers' timelines. I can make it followers-only, which means it only goes to my followers' timelines, and other people can't access it (I assume - I haven't technically tested that). Or I can make it Direct, so that only I and people I mention can read it (and I have tested that; I can't even access it myself without logging in) and it doesn't go to my followers' timelines.

What I can't do is make a post that doesn't go to my followers' timelines, but that anyone with the permalink can access (either appearing on my homepage or articles list or not).

Well...I can't do so on purpose. Apparently, for a week or two, there was an issue where due to a link being unreachable, federation was failing.

Why might I want to be able to do that? Well, maybe in order to post Indieweb-type responses that I don't want to bug my followers with, either because the Fediverse equivalent wouldn't or because I'm having a Webmention conversation they'd only see half of; or maybe if I decide to try to own and POSSE some of my github issues.

Now, that feature may be coming eventually, and in fact the tentative plan for it is mentioned on that same ticket I referred to. And I assume that as an official feature, what it would do is send Webmentions but skip federating. However, I might try my hand at an implementation of my own before that happens, and if I do, it will probably be a horrible kludge instead.

The other thing this train of thought has led me to is the conclusion that I need to give some thought to how I interact with other people who have different forms of dual presence. In some ways, it makes the most sense for me to interact with the other person's Fediverse presence if they have one, because I'm going to have better compatibility with it. In other ways, some of them would probably prefer the Indieweb interaction because that's what they consider to be the primary. And in some cases, because my blog will both federate the ActivityPub interaction and send webmentions, their websites might see what I do as both a Fediverse response and a webmention anyway - and might handle it better depending on which way I do it. I think the best answer might be to respond within the Fediverse context, and ideally also ensure that the Indieweb context is correct...assuming, of course, that I was able to find both. I guess I'll try it at some point and see how it goes.