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klu9 @
Leigh Silvester First of all, Friendica
is a Facebook alternative. It was designed as such.
However, it was designed as a better-than-Facebook-itself Facebook alternative with a lot of useful extra features and without a lot of Facebook-typical cruft. And not as an all-out, 1:1 Facebook
clone. It was made almost 16 years ago, in a time when a decentralised alternative to something didn't absolutely have to be a nearly identical clone.
Friendica does have groups;
there's the official group directory. So does Hubzilla which was made by Friendica's own creator from a fork of a fork of Friendica, so they're similar.
However, groups on Friendica and forums on Hubzilla are a lot different from groups on Facebook, especially if you want to have your own group. On Facebook, groups are a wholly separate feature of their own.
On Friendica, a group is just another account, but configured differently. Likewise, on Hubzilla, a forum is just another channel (on Hubzilla, your identity is not your account and not tied to your login), but, again, configured differently. (streams) and Forte, the two still existing more recent Hubzilla descendants from still the same creator, have groups in much the same fashion as Hubzilla's forums.
Friendica groups are not limited to users on the same Friendica node. In fact, anyone anywhere on Friendica, on Hubzilla, on (streams), on Forte, on Mastodon, Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, any of the Forkeys etc. can join Friendica groups and Hubzilla forums and interact with them. Yes, you can join Friendica groups with your existing Mastodon account.
Basically, how they work (within the Friendica/Hubzilla/(streams)/Forte family and with a Mastodon translation) is:
- In order to join a group/forum, you request a connection.
(Mastodon: You follow the group account/forum channel.) - Your request is accepted.
(Mastodon: Your follow request is confirmed, and you're followed back. - Now you're a member.
- In order to start a new thread, you send a post to the group/forum, but you must mention it in such a way that your post becomes a DM.
(Mastodon: Most of the Fediverse, Mastodon included, doesn't know these special mentions, so Friendica groups and Hubzilla forums accept normal mentions from those server applications that can't direct-mention.) - The Friendica group account/Hubzilla forum channel will automatically be quoted-shared (Friendica)/shared (Hubzilla)/quoted (Mastodon lingo) to all other group/forum members.
If you want to start a new thread in a Friendica group or a Hubzilla forum from Mastodon, which you can, you have to know the order of things, keep it in mind and adhere to it:
Title
@Group mention
Post text
So while Mastodon doesn't officially support titles, at least not when posting, you can give the thread a title by writing it
above the mention and the post text
below the mention.
A common Mastodon mistake is to first write the post text and then add the mention afterwards. However, if there is exactly one paragraph above the mention, and that paragraph is short enough, Friendica and Hubzilla will treat it as the title. Your start post might end up with a title, but not with a post text.
How
exactly groups are handled on Friendica if you're the owner, I can't tell you. The last time I've used Friendica must have been either when Mastodon was still fairly new or even before Mastodon was even made. I've switched to Hubzilla as my preferred daily driver back then and never looked back.
I've read that Friendica has something like secondary accounts which you can attach to your existing account. This way, you can have your personal Friendica account and a group account on the same login, and you can switch between them without having to log out. But that must have been introduced long after I've quit Friendica.
On Hubzilla, something like this has always been possible: If you want to start a group, you simply create another channel on your account and configure it as a forum channel, either by choosing "Community forum" as the channel role or, if you know what you're doing, by choosing "Custom" as the channel role and then activating "Group actor" in the Custom channel role settings. The latter is also the only way to have a private forum.
Friendica lets you appoint additional admins/moderators, but only from the same Friendica node that your group is on.
As Hubzilla has a full implementation of OpenWebAuth magic sign-on, include server-side, you can promote any forum member on Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams), Forte and Mitra as extra forum admins.
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Jupiter Rowland
Eric Redegeld💻🏎️☀️🙋💖
