I don't know exactly how things work on Facebook because I never had an account there; my own frame of reference is Dreamwidth, where there are access lists and communities. Access lists are a way to restrict certain posts to your account as viewable to only certain users you've manually chosen. Communities are themed groups of users with moderators where generally members can make posts to share with others in the community. To me these are two very different features, but they're both valuable.
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Groups is what is missing from Mastodon. Real Groups that is. Where posts inside a group stay inside a group. You join or leave the group if you are not interested in that topic. Same as Matrix Rooms or Telgram groups. Currently Mastodon is just a stream of announcements and no real social connection. Individual threads are OK. But you'll never find that thread again after a few days.
Groups mean people can post in detail on that topic without woryying it'll bore their followers. People have multiple different topics that need not overlap.
Groups make a social connection. You'll get to know people.
@Ianp5a @mayel @gilles @ivan isn't that what "Circles" on bonfire are supposed to do?
If we want ppl to move from #bigtech (and I belive that we want this) we need to provide an alternative - that is on-par with the most important parts of e.g., Facebook. One of those important parts is indeed "groups". If this is not present, noone will move.
Btw, I created a Circle - but cannot figure out how to post to that circle?
@jrossstocholm
My understanding is that Circles are how you set the privacy levels or interaction permissions for individual posts, which is a different kind of feature from Facebook groups.
I don't know exactly how things work on Facebook because I never had an account there; my own frame of reference is Dreamwidth, where there are access lists and communities. Access lists are a way to restrict certain posts to your account as viewable to only certain users you've manually chosen. Communities are themed groups of users with moderators where generally members can make posts to share with others in the community. To me these are two very different features, but they're both valuable.
@ivan @mayel I of course don't understand the exact architecture, but one thing that I can image that could be a challenge is that the "village only feed" contains posts based on a property of their boundary ("only for villagers"). If I understand correctly: as a villager who is allowed to read a post with this boundary, I only know that I am allowed to read, not that the it has boundary "only for villagers". Or do I?
@gilles @ivan We have a work-in-progress implementation of groups but that will be in the community flavour: bonfirenetworks.org/apps/
@coyote @Ianp5a @mayel @gilles @ivan I am trying really hard to understand bonfire 😊.
When you say that "Bonfire community" will have groups - does that mean that it will be a different version of Bonfire - and different from "Bonfire social"?
So, for comparisons to #bigtech:
Bonfire Social --> Twitter (micro-blogging)
Bonfire Community --> Facebook
I am in no way saying that it is a bad thing, but just to compare, pixelfed is the brand name of the platform where users can chose where to sign up. But it's the same app. But bonfire will more likely be a "powered by bonfire" where whatever brand name will be on top and bonfire will be the underlying infrastructure/core?
A bit like PPBoard was back in the day 😊
https://sourceforge.net/projects/pbboard/
@mayel @ivanI am currently trying whether I can do this with boundaries and circles. Honestly, I find the connecting concepts boundaries and circles really hard to grasp. They seem to be implemented so generically (which is GREAT) that I have difficulties navigating.
@gilles yeah that's understandable! we still have a way to go with UX, in-app explanations, and docs. We've started drafting this document if you have any feedback on it: docs.bonfirenetworks.org/bou...
@mayel great, I will have a look at it. I would love to contribute! As a psychologist and teacher with some experience in R package development, I may actually be of a little help.
@mayel Oh, by the way: I am trying some things with circles and I don't seem to be able to add an account. If I click the tab "members" of my circle, I should be able to search find my alter ego (gilles_2) here and add, right?
Pretty sure I did this in the past, but I don't see my other self (gilles_2) anymore.
Maybe irrelevant, but I just changed the \ of gilles_2 Maybe something wnet wrong there.
Bonfire social
This is a bonfire demo instance for testing purposes
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