Federation

[secondtruth]

Please consider implementing federation in Apache Answer to allow creating a network of Q&A sites similar to Stack Exchange, but distributed. This will enable independent instances to share questions, answers, comments, categories, tags, and user data, fostering greater connectivity between users and collaboration across different Q&A communities.

Details

I understand that this feature is a long-term undertaking and will not be achieved quickly. It requires thorough planning, including collecting the opinions and thoughts of the community, but it can lead to a great positive impact. Of course, this feature should be completely optional.

Suggested long term plan:

1. Shared Content:

   • Utilize protocols like ActivityPub to enable inter-instance communication.
   • Introduce shared questions and answers as well as comments that can be syndicated across participating instances.
   • Implement a system for federated tags and categories to maintain consistency across instances.
   • Allow instances to subscribe to and share specific tags and categories.

2. User Interaction:

   • Enable users to interact with content across multiple instances seamlessly.
   • Provide unified notifications and updates from subscribed instances.

3. Moderation and Governance:

   • Develop a federated moderation system to handle cross-instance content.
   • Allow instances to establish shared governance policies for content management.

Goal

Foster greater community interaction, allowing as many users as possible to get in touch with each other, potentially leading to new friendships. Also, improve the impact of knowledge sharing, enabling users to collaboratively solve even larger problems.

Potential Future Enhancements

• Enhanced user profiles that aggregate contributions across multiple instances.
• Cross-instance search functionality for finding relevant questions and answers.
• Integration with other federated platforms for broader community reach.

Related Reading Material

• Why Federation? – An article explaining the benefits and importance of federation in web technologies.
• Federated Webrings – In the glory days of web 1.0, social websites would prominently link out to their digital neighbors via lists known as webrings; magical doorways to an expansive hinterland of digital villages. This article envisions the concept of webrings as collaborative and federated applications.
• Weird Netizens – The article discusses reclaiming digital identity and promoting digital autonomy, criticizing the monopolization of identity by large tech companies and proposing a more decentralized approach. It advocates for a flexible, user-centric approach that allows for multiple personas and easy transitions between identity providers.
• The Agentic Fediverse – The "Agentic Fediverse" proposes a new kind of federation, envisioning a "second generation" iteration of the concept currently established with ActivityPub. It's a work-in-progress experiment that originated from the [Commune] group.

[fenbox]

This is a great idea. I also hope to see more discussions.

[secondtruth]

@OfficialCRUGG I saw that you reacted with thumbs down to my post. I'd like to know what you dislike about my proposal, so that i can improve it.