@blaine @Gargron
Those interested in the W3C effort should join the "Social Web Incubator Working Group."

Blaine, why aren't you there?

https://www.w3.org/community/socialcg/

@blaine @Gargron It's always been clear how decisions about Mastodon, the software, are made.

Eugen makes them.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@lucid00 @blaine @Gargron

My only concern right now is the lack of a standardized REST API for clients (preferably something that uses OpenID Connect instead of just OAuth).

There is a standard client API; it’s part of ActivityPub. Federation is part of the server to server API (S2S), but half of the spec is devoted to the client to server API (C2S). But mastodon has refused to implement it since its inception and therefore every other implementation has had to use the mastoAPI for client support.

@lucid00 @blaine "I think betting it all on Mastodon is a bigger issue IMO, it's like saying that Chromium should have better governance instead of promoting browser engine diversity."

Why not both?

You can promote browser engine diversity in the long run while acknowledging that in the short term, Chromium is widespread and popular and so it would be good to address the issues it has.

@lucid00 @blaine @Gargron

At this point, the concern is not the technical protocol standards or their implementations, but the way they're being deployed and used in the wild. The QT issue is about social behavior. Search is about behavior and discovery. Both are also about what federated moderation is.

And then there's the question of distributed identity, and on that item, @Gargron should not lead, because Mastodon follows a large-service blueprint and isn't equipped for multi-domain.

@lucid00 @blaine @Gargron
No analogy is perfect but this one's really interesting (& apt given your instance).

That said my still-naive take on it is that Mastodon is far from a sure bet.

@lucid00 @blaine @Gargron Yeah, an API standards process is going to be critical. If all the 3rd party apps target @Gargron's Mastodon API, then that becomes the de-facto standard. Meanwhile, misskey development withers because it has its own incomatible API.

I could imagine something like how XMPP has XEPs to define protocol extensions; some kind of formal process for API modifications where other backends can weigh in.

@PieterPeach @Gargron I don't think so, no. Mastodon-the-software is massively dominant right now, and so there's no way for any other implementation to make a meaningful shift with regards to specific feature support without significant conceptual fragmentation.

"Governance" might look like encouraging and supporting forks, though! Even just having a bunch of fork/alt software authors contributing to the discussion of what is "officially" supported would be really great.

@greeneralia @blaine @Gargron I agree that individual instances should be able to disable quote posts (for the quotes, the quoted, or both)!

But won’t there always be decisions to make at the platform level—whether to implement, how to implement—that require group decision-making at the cross-instance level?

@bitpickup @sfb I'm what you'd call "pretty familiar" with the fediverse. 😅😉

Basically, there's a huge gap between the "meritocratic" ideal of protocol-based market open source and the reality of running communal projects with collectivized goals.

I want Eugen to succeed, but also the fediverse writ large, which is precisely why I think it's so important for him to figure out a more open governance model. It's his opportunity to take.

/requeteche tagged @blaine as not trustworthy right now and has to look out for why that just happened in the face of the responsibility of all his peers

if any one want's to know why, the only way to solve the issue is by a call for VAR

/zwinkersmilie