Re: User stories for Social API

> On 4 Feb 2015, at 14:54, Evan Prodromou <evan@e14n.com> wrote:
> 
> On 2015-02-04 06:01 AM, henry.story@bblfish.net wrote:
>> So all the user stories currently could be user stories for totally siloed social networks.
>> 
> YES. That is exactly the case.
> 
> The difference is when you get to the developer stories. Those describe some unique advantages of using a standard API between client and server.
> 
> If you'd like I can make this more explicit in the user cases.
>> We could extend the user stories to make them more clearly cross organisational.
> That would be a grievous mistake at this point.

I am sorry to say but I fundamentlly disagree. 
It is not doing that that is a grievous mistake. And I will strongly object
at all levels if we don't get this right.

> 
> We have as one of our deliverables a federation protocol. Our social API is the client-to-server piece; the federation protocol is the server-to-server piece.

That is bad architecture. ( sorry to be blunt, but if we don't say it now we're going to waste
everybody's time here, and we will have to do this again in 3 years time )

There is no need for a Federation protocol if you do things correctly.
You seem to be wanting to build the social web the way Microsoft Word people would have built
it in 1990: don't change MS Word, but add a federation server to make the things work together. 

The W3C developed URIs and created hypertext in such a way that any web page can link to any other
web page. They did not create a document format where you could only link to pages on the same server
and then create a federation protocol to tie documents from one server to those of another!

> 
> We should make a point of not putting forward a social API that isn't compatible with federation. However, it should not be dependent on federation.

You don't need a federation protocol if you do things right. If you do the client server protocol 
at the right architectural level it should work on the web from the get go.

In fact that is exactly what Linked Data provides. 
I am sorry I have to mention a technology here, but your architectural decision
seems to stems from lack of knowledge of what is actually possible. 

Henry

> 
> -Evan
> 
> 
> 

Social Web Architect
http://bblfish.net/

Received on Wednesday, 4 February 2015 14:06:23 UTC