The issue of SocialHub is an interesting one, because where we are today is an odd situation where you have activitypub developers fragmented across multiple collaborative channels.

• Some discuss their issues on their respective repositories only
• Some discuss on SocialHub
• Some discuss on Matrix channels

However, the bottom line truth is as follows: every ActivityPub developer is on the fediverse, ergo why shouldn't ActivityPub-focused discussions take place on the fediverse as well?

Up until this year, SocialHub has been an island separate from the fediverse. I used this analogy in my talk at fedicon to describe how lonely starting a community can be.

To SocialHub's credit, they have created a community of ActivityPub developers that exists to this day, kudos to them! The question remains now whether SocialHub performing their function adequately — to bring together ActivityPub developers of all stripes.

That's a question worth exploring in and of itself.

cc fediversereport@mastodon.social julian@activitypub.space

Separately, it's worth addressing the fact that developer conversations do take place on the fediverse. It happens organically all the time, because like I said above, all activitypub developers are on the fediverse.

The problem here is that the de facto implementation is Mastodon, and the conversations taking place on Mastodon are by design ephemeral.

Arguments can be made that Mastodon does keep a copy of all of the conversations, and one need only look for them, but they're buried in such a way as to be essentially lost to history forever. You've probably tried looking for something you or someone else said, and started scrolling a profile feed endlessly looking for it... don't lie, we've all done it.

This is where we can throw technology at the problem... by building really good search, we can mitigate some of these losses. However this relies on people to actually use the search functionality, which is hard to guarantee

Another solution is proper categorization of content... and this is where you'll say I have a bias. I certainly do! I'm a purveyor of forum software... the age old way of communicating online where stuff gets categorized and organized topically. To add this layer of human organization on top gets us that much closer to ensuring that the discussions we have and the discoveries we make are not simply lost to time, but preserved for future developers to re-discover and re-consume.

cc fediversereport@mastodon.social julian@activitypub.space

Hi @julian,
IMO the problem is a social one, the proposed solutions technical. Won't do.

IMO it takes social activities, like conferences, to build bonds. Online that's orders of magnitude more time-consuming, frustrating and brittle.

#SocialHub, as I knew it, lacked interest of the 'big shots'. Their disinterest rendered it a side-show.

mro@digitalcourage.social I think you're completely right. I've had the privilege of attending two in-person conferences related to ActivityPub—FOSDEM and Fedicon—and the difference between them and collaborating online is staggering.

I'm not so sure about the assertion that "big shots" weren't on SocialHub as a cause of it being sidelined. While the big names (e.g. Evan from SWF, Renaud/Claire from Mastodon, Nutomic from Lemmy, to name a few) don't post there often, they do show up from time to time, which goes to show that something like a forum does have a place in online collaboration.

Perhaps it is a question of whether there is enough derived value from participating in SocialHub.

I will say this, though, that I have far too much going on with my life (work, family, hobbies, more work) to dedicate the appropriate mind-share to yet another social website. I happen to participate in SocialHub discussions purely because I can do so from my own ActivityPub-enabled software. Occasionally I visit the site directly when I am directly mentioned (and later emailed about it.)

@julian Lemmy is also guilty of this despite being a federated forum. Mbin is even worse, having their support/development channel on Matrix only and apparently no presence at all on the fediverse.

torsi@torsi.ca fwiw I believe melroy@kbin.melroy.org (or melroy@mastodon.melroy.org on Mastodon) is present so they're not completely absent from the fediverse