@eeeee
From this website, you can follow almost any user account you want on almost any Mastodon-, Lemmy-, mbin-, PixelFed-, Misskey- (and its forks), Hometown-, Friendica-, Hubzilla-, or Mitra-based website, barring a few minor obstacles (neither side needs to have blocked the other, neither side needs to have disabled federation, and the user you're following needs to have not blocked you). You can also follow groups like Lemmy communities, or Guppe groups.

There's really no need to have accounts on all platforms. Not unless you want to have separation between what you post, or want the variation in UX that comes with all of these different pieces of software focusing on different core experiences.

What's important to know is that they work via syndication -- content is mirrored across the network, not viewed insitu -- and that syndication doesn't occur without prompting. So, you need to go through the steps of entering a remote user or group's url or full account address (username@host.tld) in order to fetch content, and that content, by and large, is not backfilled.

If you can accept these limitations, then a single Mastodon, mbin, nodeBB, etc. account is all you need.

@Kichae @eeeee that is my approach as well. I was tired of having to maintain so many accounts for "social media", and so when I was finally able to make NodeBB my primary gateway to social media that was a big step for me.

It doesn't hurt that I get way more engagement on the open social web

@julian "We're making a super cool product that's adopting this space" tends to go over well in the Fediverse, yeah. We love being catered to with cool toys and tools!

And good God do I miss real forums, after a decade on Reddit.

Ok, if I can give specific example. I found a community via lemmy which is interesting.
@medicine@mander.xyz
If I want to post a topic in it, can I make a nodebb post and send it there?

@eeeee I'm not actually sure about it, but I think all you have to do is mention the community.

In fact, you did in your reply, and I don't actually know what would happen normally. Perhaps it has to be a root post.

Ok I tried this as as a root post

It didnt get there.
Whereas I can post into that community with my similar named lemm.ee account

.. in medicine@mander.xyz group nothing arrived
There is a post I made earlier (using isurg@lemm.ee) but not this latest one from isurg@nodebb

@eeeee Thanks, can you open an issue about this? I'll have to see what Lemmy expects for a new submission.

@julian I tested out a root post that mentioned a PieFed community, and it got there okay - it's viewable at https://pythag.net/c/sci_fi (and federated out okay to another PieFed instance at https://palaver.p3x.de/c/sci_fi@pythag.net)

My guess as to why Lemmy might not like it is that the activity contains:

"audience": "https://community.nodebb.org/category/-1"

It looks like Lemmy tries to fetch that and can't parse the response.

@silverpill@mitra.social this is now tested and outgoing backfill is working with NodeBB.

Are there plans to introduce post collections to all levels via context?

While there is utility in exposing it for the root-level, if I am Announce'd one of the replies (e.g. this one), there is no explicit link to the top-level post in order to discover context.

@julian Sure, I will add context to replies. Maybe in the next release

@angus @mario @jupiter_rowland @kopper

@mario@hub.somaton.com when you say "internally backfills", I'm assuming you mean between Hubzilla instances?

Is this done via context containing activities, or objects?

I still cant post into a community on Lemmy from a nodebb instance.
Ive had more tries and looked at other posts from other sites, which are going in. It seems they are directed in there somehow, not just by mentioning the group in the post.
@julian did you get any idea on this?

Heres an example of a nodebb post that went nowhere!
https://isurg.org/topic/124/pancreatic-pseudocyst

@eeeee it is likely due to audience.

So, what happens on your end is you make a topic and mention the Lemmy community.

When NodeBB federates that post out, the Lemmy community is included in the mentions, but it also specifies your category 18, World Chat, in audience.

If Lemmy sees that, and it doesn't know about that community already, it will drop the activity immediately. If it does, then it will likely slot the post into the "World Chat on isurg.com" community on that Lemmy instance.

Lemmy removed audience checking, so this might be a non-issue. Once that Lemmy instance updates to the latest version, it'll hopefully post to the correct community.

That's a tricky one, though, because which community should it post to?

• "Medicine" on mander.xyz, or
• "World Chat" on isurg.com?