Zotlabs|Hubzilla Development

Thu, 12 May 2022 10:41:11 +0000

Scott M. Stolz wrote the following post Thu, 12 May 2022 10:41:10 +0000

Owner of a Post vs. its Author

Do the Zot protocol and Hubzilla differentiate between the owner of the post and its author?

For example, if you post on someone else's wall or on a forum, the post owner is the channel you posted on, but the author is the person who posted.

This naturally allows for different permission levels to be applied, with the owner of the post (the channel) basically having full admin/moderator rights over the post, while still allowing the author of the post to edit it.

I am creating a new theme and eventually some forum mods, but something like this seems to be something that would need to be in the core, which is why I am asking here.

show all 13 Comments

Mario Vavti

Thu, 12 May 2022 12:57:03 +0000

Yes, Hubzilla differentiates between author and owner in the case of wall to wall posts or sourced posts.
Forum posts are a special case though. Posts to a forum will always be reshared by the forum in which case both the owner and author is the forum channel.

Scott M. Stolz

Thu, 12 May 2022 13:27:40 +0000

@Mario Vavti

Forum posts are a special case though. Posts to a forum will always be reshared by the forum in which case both the owner and author is the forum channel.

Is there a reason why it is done that way? Traditionally, forums have separate permissions for the admin (channel) and the author.

Scott M. Stolz

Thu, 12 May 2022 15:15:21 +0000

@Mario Vavti

reshared by the forum

Since you mentioned "reshared," I am guessing that it has something to do with how forum post notifications are sent to other hubs. Although I am not fully understanding why you can't include the author information and title anyway.

If it is because of how notifications work, I think that perhaps the presentation via notifications and the local presentation need to be different. That information should at least be available locally even if it is not available remotely.

Mario Vavti

Thu, 12 May 2022 15:58:49 +0000

The reason is interoperability. None of the other fediverse projects supports the owner/author model.

Scott M. Stolz

Thu, 12 May 2022 17:55:10 +0000

@Mario Vavti

The reason is interoperability. None of the other fediverse projects supports the owner/author model.

But how do the Wall-to-Wall posts work then? They have both the author and the channel. ("Author via Channel") Are wall-to-wall posts only possible Hubzilla-to-Hubzilla?

Mario Vavti

Sat, 14 May 2022 06:46:30 +0000

@Scott M. Stolz i don't think we federate wall to wall posts to activitypub or diaspora currently.

Scott M. Stolz

Sat, 14 May 2022 14:45:01 +0000

@Mario Vavti Okay. Thank you. That makes sense. And thank you for being so patient with me. I am still trying to learn how Hubzilla works.

Looking in the database, it looks like:
1. Some forum posts have the author and title stored in the item table.
2. Some forum posts have the author and title stored in the body of the post.

[share author='Scott+M.+Stolz' profile='https://wistex.biz/channel/scott' portable_id='xxx' avatar='https://completehostingguide.com/photo/profile/s/10' link='https://completehostingguide.com/item/xxx' auth='true' posted='2022-05-14 01:44:13' message_id='https://completehostingguide.com/item/xxx'][h3][b]Example Post[/b][/h3]

I assume that forum posts that are locally created are the ones with all of the information in the database, and posts that came in via federation do not.

So, it sounds like what I will need to do is extract the post information (author and title) from the body, and then reformat it so that it looks like a forum post when viewed locally.

Does this sound like a reasonable way to do it?

Mario Vavti

Sat, 14 May 2022 18:21:40 +0000 last edited: Sat, 14 May 2022 19:08:32 +0000

@Scott M. Stolz i have no objection to add the title for all the posts if you think this is a requirement. It would be a minor change in include/items.php where we create the reshare from the received direct message.

Mario Vavti

Sat, 14 May 2022 18:31:40 +0000

@Scott M. Stolz https://framagit.org/hubzilla/core/-/commit/62b1ff4ba1844d9019aebd328256a38979e1f717

Scott M. Stolz

Sat, 14 May 2022 18:56:39 +0000

Thank you. Having the title display as the title instead of in the post would give it a more consistent design.

Speaking of item.php, what is the difference between item.php and display.php? From reading the comments in those files, it sounds like display is for public posts and item is for private posts. Or am I misunderstanding the difference between the two?

Mario Vavti

Sat, 14 May 2022 19:11:13 +0000

@Scott M. Stolz i was referring to include/items.php not Zotlabs/Module/Item.php

In general Zotlabs/Module/Item.php is used to create new content via a POST request while Zotlabs/Module/Display.php is for displaying content.

Scott M. Stolz

Sat, 14 May 2022 19:41:54 +0000

I noticed that for every post, there is an /item/xxx (plink) version and a /display/xxx (llink) version. And sometimes the /item/xxx does not work while /display/xxx for the same post works.

I am guessing llink = local link, and plink = permanent link.

Someone, I think you, mentioned that the plink will not always work since the owner is the forum, not the person viewing the post. But, since we know (or should know) that it is a local forum post and know (or should know) that it is publicly visible, shouldn't it be publicly visible when viewed via /item/xxx?

Scott M. Stolz

Sat, 14 May 2022 20:16:47 +0000

Another option would be to create a specific page for viewing public forum posts. This would allow forum posts to have different formatting than social media posts. It also allows for additional forum related features to be added to the local view.

When Hubzilla sends out the notifications via zot, activitypub, diaspora, etc., Hubzilla links back to the forum post display page instead of /item.

This might be a easier solution because the permission logic is so simple for forum posts. That page just checks if it is a forum post and publicly visible, It is also easily extendable without having to be concerned with non-forum post permissions, which is much more complicated.

Maybe this is the direction I should go for displaying local forum posts, instead of depending on /item/xxx?