Re: The term: "Mastodon" vs "fediverse" vs ...?

Johannes,
You wrote:

> (Now taking cover in case anybody considers this line of thinking
> unacceptable :-))

If you had written in just about any other W3C or IETF group, and, given
how much I hate naming discussions, I would have been one of the first to
say: Please, don't get us bogged down in naming discussions!

However, what we're talking about here is the "Social Web" thus, in this
discussion, sociology intersects with technology in a way not common for
other discussion contexts. In this context, the suitability of names,
framings, stories, etc. are probably just as important as the technical
aspects of whatever we discuss.

Personally, I think it would be great to simply use the name of the
interaction pattern: You subscribe to people's feeds and you publish to
your subscribers. You get notifications whenever things change. So, I'd
call it "PubSub." :-)

bob wyman


On Mon, Dec 19, 2022 at 7:50 PM Johannes Ernst <johannes.ernst@gmail.com>
wrote:

> With the recent uptake, the general public talks about “let’s leave
> Twitter and use Mastodon instead”.
>
> Worse, often it is described as “the Mastodon service” (as opposed to many
> independently operated services that all happen to run the same software)
>
> Worse, very few people talk about the core value proposition here, which
> is not “Mastodon” but the fact that it is an open network in which anybody
> can participate with any software, only assuming it speaks the right
> protocols.
>
> In other words, the “fediverse”.
>
> Which unfortunately, in my view, is a term only hard-core geeks could
> love. Hard to imagine anybody else would go to the picnic at the park and
> enthusiastically tell their friends and non-geek family "all the cool kids
> are on the fediverse” — and they would turn around and sign up.
>
> Can we do better? Uptake by the general public could probably be 2x with a
> friendlier term. FreeNet is taken — but something like that would be better.
>
> (IMHO it’s not "ActivityPub” either. For one, other protocols are
> necessary to make it work, from Webfinger to HTTP signing. In the future,
> all of those will evolve and perhaps be superseded, but the “fediverse”
> (whatever its name) will hopefully remain.)
>
> (Now taking cover in case anybody considers this line of thinking
> unacceptable :-))
>
> Cheers,
>
>
>
> Johannes.
>
> https://reb00ted.org/
>
>
>