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Re: "Exploring Federation and Public Communication On Gemini"
My concern is this. I think that a gemini service, or application, would be better if it wasn't dependent on another service for operation (email or misfin). I wouldn't want this to go the way that Web applications did in the early years, where you had to install Apache, configure php support, have a working Sendmail instance, configure a database etc. I know things aren't likely to get that complicated. I'm purposely making the example complex to illustrate that a self contained application would be better managed and fit the ethos of Gemini better.
That said, I totally agree in regards to leaving out "likes" or anything that smells of gamification.
2023-05-22 · 4 months ago
I agree (mostly) that self-contained is theoretically better. However, there are certain things gemini is designed to do and certain things which it is not designed to do. It seems like sending messages was not one of the things gemini is meant to do.
Therefore I find it justifiable to use protocols which *were* designed for sending messages in order to accoplish that goal, and using gemini to make the communication publically available, searchable, and easy to join in on.
In contrast, staying confined to gemini when trying to acheive things gemini is not meant to accomplish is likely to result in inconvenient and inefficient systems.
I do agree, however, that if everything can be made to work smoothly using gemlogs and antenna-style systems alone, then that is preferable.
Something like ActivityPub is a push based system, where when an event happens on a server, it sends info out to all of the other servers that are subscribed to that event.
But I think you could accomplish something similar with more of a pull type system, where servers periodically send a request for the info that they want. It would require polling and be less of an instant communication, but Gemini is slower and we're used to that. Anyway, the requests would likely fit just fine into the limit imposed by the Gemini spec, and the response should be plenty long enough to fit the data being returned.
Antenna is a sort of a push-and-pull-based system, no? In that someone tells it to look for new logs and so it goes and gets them.
A federation system could work the same way, thus avoiding weird delays (which, while not the biggest deal, seem preferable to avoid).
@satch An Antenna-like pull-on-request kind of system is exactly what I'm envisioning for my eventual Bubble federation experiments.
Periodic polling would just be wasteful.
I didn't spend too much time thinking about and reading through proposals but all this kinda reminds me of a similar solution from RSS land:
— gemi.dev/cgi-bin/wp.cgi/view?WebSub
Leaving it here to be used as a possible source of inspiration.
@skyjake that makes sense. Basically just pulling feeds down?
Pulling feeds down, yes, but while the feeds would be Gemini feeds in format, they would be comprised of Bubble notifications, essentially: a representation of the activity on the site that is in machine-readable but easy-to-parse form.
That would provide enough information for other instance(s) to recreate the same activity remotely.
— gemini://satch.xyz/log/federation.gmi
Exploring Federation and Public Communication On Gemini — Any thoughts?