Re: Can the SocialWeb save Google Groups? (or, at least do what it should do?)

I'm interested in seeing _existing_ forum software like Discourse being either modded or forked to support ActivityPub. They have an existing model of sustainability (in part of those who help found that project's existing capital) and a large enough audience that would connect thousands of Discourse instances into the Fediverse.

It's a Ruby on Rails stack (IIRC), similar to Mastodon so there's opportunity for some level of reusability/overlap. 

On Thu, 2023-03-09 at 16:32 -0500, Bob Wyman wrote:
> As discussed on [/.](https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/03/08/172217/google-groups-has-been-left-to-die),  yesterday, Andrew Helwer asked on [his blog](https://ahelwer.ca/post/2023-03-08-google-groups/): *"Google Groups has been left to die: Where should the formal methods community move?**"* He suggests that Google Groups is in decline and that *"It’s clear we ran afoul of the old lesson: don’t build communities for long-lasting FOSS projects on proprietary infrastructure you don’t control."*  
> *  
> *  
> It seems to me that the kind of discussion groups that started on USENET and then eventually migrated over to Google Groups are, in fact, "social" and thus might be usefully included within the scope of this group. (Even though NNTP is an IETF RFC, not a W3C standard.) In fact, it appears that one could construct a useful analog to these legacy systems using ActivityStreams and ActivityPub -- but not the way they are implemented in Mastodon or most other existing AS/AP systems. It is also quite clear that using a Federated approach to maintain this kind of discussion might protect them from the catastrophic loss that arises when a proprietary system decides to change its priorities.
> 
> Is a future for USENET/Google Groups-like social interactions appropriately discussed here? Can or should the SocialWeb provide a new, more persistent, home for Helwer's Format Methods Community?
> 
> What do you think?
> 
> bob wyman
>

Received on Friday, 10 March 2023 15:43:52 UTC