Re: CfC: ActivityPub errata on inconsistencies in the side effects of receiving a Follow activity

Hey, Ben!

I'd already deployed the errata before your email went out. I'll revert 
the changes and update the ticket so it's clear we didn't get consensus.

Evan

On 2025-06-13 1:00 p.m., Benjamin Goering wrote:
> I'm actually sitting here typing some concerns, so I want to hit send 
> since Evan's on the thread and to raise the concern to the chair that 
> this CfC removes a requirement for actors to consent to being added to 
> a followers collection, which we should all object to both as a design 
> choice and because of how it affects conformance. This change should 
> not be made lightly.
>
> It's extremely hard to determine the impact of these amendments to 
> spec text without an explanation of the error that is attempted to be 
> corrected.
>
> I will object to any erratum that does not include a description of 
> the error in plain language to help contextualize any proposed 
> candidate correction.
> If you don't label candidate corrections in your erratum, it should be 
> assumed that your proposed spec changes are recommendations and not 
> agreed upon candidate corrections.
>
> That applies here too: We do not have consensus on this proposed 
> erratum because this proposed erratum does not explain the error it is 
> attempting to correct.
>
> Since it appears you are asking for agreement on changing normative 
> text (in this and several other cases), assuming your erratum do 
> indeed contain candidate corrections, what class of changes 
> <https://www.w3.org/policies/process/#correction-classes> you are 
> proposing.
>
> This appears to be class 3 since your are either recommending or fully 
> proposing to remove a requirement in the spec, specifically the 
> requirement (and an additional recommendation) in section 7.5.
>
> I object to removing the requirement " In the case of a |Reject|, the 
> server /MUST NOT/ add the actor to the object actor's Followers 
> Collection <https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#followers>." in section 
> 7.5.
> It is important that an actor has a chance to consent to being added 
> to another actor's followers collection.
>
>
> On Fri, May 30, 2025 at 9:48 AM Evan Prodromou <evan@prodromou.name> 
> wrote:
>
>     Issue #320 in the ActivityPub repository points out a discrepancy
>     between sections 5.3 and section 7.5 of the document:
>
>     https://github.com/w3c/activitypub/issues/320
>
>     Roughly, the problem is that one section describes the `followers`
>     collection as every actor that has sent a Follow activity; the
>     other section describes the approval process for being added to
>     `followers`.
>
>     To correct this problem, during issue triage, I've added two
>     proposed errata:
>
>     https://www.w3.org/wiki/ActivityPub_errata/Proposed
>
>     The first is:
>
>       * Section 5.3 "Followers Collection" should begin,/Every actor
>         SHOULD have a followers collection. This is where one would
>         find a list of all the actors that are following the actor./
>
>     The second:
>
>       * In section 7.5 "Follow Activity", the second paragraph is
>         incorrect, and should be removed.
>
>     This is a call for consensus for adding these two errata to our
>     errata page for ActivityPub:
>
>     https://www.w3.org/wiki/ActivityPub_errata
>
>     If, in 14 days, we have no objections on the list, the errata will
>     be added. I'll also apply the changes described to the "editor's
>     draft" of the document.
>
>     Evan
>
>