#tomo update for anyone interested in seeing how the sausage is being made with a new decentralized #nntp based better-than #reddit network:
the server software is a fork of Rocksolid-Light
the back-end for connecting to the server and reading/writing posts is 100% nntp protocol compatible.
you can connect to a tomo shard from any newsreader like thunderbird (win/mac/linux), tin, SeaMonkey, NewsTap (iOS) or even classic programs like Forté Agent and Netscape Communicator
posts written on the tomonet.* discussion group hierarchy are shared across all tomo shards.
posts written to private groups on your shard, stay only on your shard.
i'm currently rewriting the front-end so you can do anything from the web interface, without dropping to shell:
create your own discussion groups
delete messages, delete groups
permit/deny access to admin and moderator areas
the big job this week was writing a Roles & Permissions system (RBAC) so group owners, admins and moderators control who can read/post, create/delete groups, and so on.
running a tomo shard is running a #BBS in 2023: as a sysop you are responsible for your users' data, dealing with moderation, and carrying (and not carrying) the kinds of groups your users are into. i'm putting a massive amount of care into providing sysops and mods with the front-end tools for making running a shard enjoyable
I tried using Email but the onboarding was very confusing. I have to choose a server? And I'm at the whims of server admins having petty disputes for if my posts are delivered to my friends?
learning that several other decentralized #nntp projects have existed for a few years
reading about the NNTPChan protocol - it uses hashed message id's to produce unique nntp message-id headers across the network. seems like a great idea.
"'The threadiverse', aka #fediverse group servers like #guppe, #lemmy and #kbin are all based on the premise that each community is hosted on one instance, but users and posts can come from all over. So it's like any normal #phpBB-style forum, except you use your own user instead of having to register and check everywhere.
Makes sense to me, and I'm not saying that they should do it any other way, but this is exactly how mailing lists work."
while i'm sad to see #reddit circling the toilet, it only reminded me of how urgent it is that we finally ditch centralized social media. reddit itself isn't the problem - it's a symptom of a much more generalized problem we've had since FB became a thing in the late 00's.
i've spent the past week re-purposing, patching, porting, and expanding a great piece of software based on the same #nntp protocol that #usenet uses, for creating discussion groups. i'm calling it "tomo" (友 - 'friend') bbs.
some time soon folks can spin up their own tomo shards, create discussion groups in a similar manner to reddit, decide whether they want to keep the group restricted to their shard, or share the group with other tomo shards in a public network of discussion groups called tomonet. completely decentralized private or public discussions without supercorporation bs.
best of all, since it is based on plain 'ol usenet-like nntp, you can read and post to discussion groups from a 1977 VAX mainframe, a 1984 IBM PCjr at 2400 baud, an Apple Newton, or a brand new phone.
i can't wait to bust out forté free agent for windows 3.11 and get posting this weekend. 😎
We really should consider services that are not #ActivityPub based but still a federated to be part of the #Fediverse and promote them accordingly. Self-hosting is a plus.
#Usenet is also federated and has been since 1979! There are free providers: https://www.big-8.org/wiki/News_service_providers. If one excludes binaries groups, it's possible to peer with other providers via #NNTP. Posts and groups are linkable in HTML.
So are #SSB, #NNTP and #ActivityPub the main #social protocols to keep an eye on right now or are others also pretty active and/or with interesting features?
@alex@daviwil
There is nothing more satisfying
than working for hours (read: weeks) on that single all-covering config and deploying it with one click.
Also no shepherd sounded nice, but i didnt make the switch to guix from nix yet.
For anyone interested in #LispWorks#CommonLisp, I've just found a full archive of the lispworks-hug mailing list dating back until 2002 to today on the #NNTP server "news.gwene.org". The newsgroup is "gmane.lisp.lispworks.general".
The newsgroup can be easily accessed and searched with this GNUS setup (no auth required):
I wonder if I can just go ahead and make the book fullly available at this point. It earns O'Reilly next to nothing I'm sure, but may be helpful to some who are now building what was once called groupware.
I've been all out of steam for much in the way of side projects lately. But, this whole Reddit-splosion thing - and the enshittification of Google search results - really makes me want to finally find time to build some sort of federated link sharing thing that leans into socially-networked search. Like less emphasis on the discussion forum aspect and more on the discovery of good stuff via real humans aspect.
@randomgeek@lmorchard@genehack I remember back about 15 years ago I wrote a hacky #RSS to #NNTP daemon so I could read my #blog subscriptions in Microsoft #Entourage. (Entourage was a terrible newsreader, but RSS is unicast and not threaded so it didn’t matter.)
This is annecdata - not a serious academic study. Adjust your expectations accordingly. When I first got online, the World Wide Web was still in its infancy - so CompuServe was my gateway to the Internet. I loved their well organised chat room. A couple of clicks and I could be discussing Babylon 5 with […]
@Edent Gah I miss the uni days and in particular our local ukc.misc group! We had “MiscMeets” and all sorts of fables and friendships came of that! #ukc#ukcmisc#newsnet#nntp
Ich empfinde das (Ver-)Folgen von Personen als total falsches Konzept. Kaum hatte ich die ersten Personen in meiner #Gestalktenliste, wurde mir klar, daß ich wirklich nicht jede Äußerung von diesen sehen will.
Wir sollten stattdessen #Themen folgen können. Die #Tagmoral ist aber zu niedrig und mir wurde erklärt, daß obendrein das #tagbasierte Propagieren zwischen den Instanzen funktionieren kann, aber nicht muß. Ich hab's mangels Ahnung von Mastodon-Server-Internas nicht richtig verstanden.
Soziale Netze scheinen überwiegend zum Followers-, Likes- und Boosts-Zählen zu existieren? Für mich funktioniert das SO nicht.
Die hiesige (emacs.ch) lokale Timeline ist zum Glück recht ergiebig zu einem gewissen Thema, was mich auf die Idee bringt, daß generell eine Instanz pro Thema her müsste, sozusagen die Wiederentdeckung von #Newsgroups mit anderen Mitteln!
Zum Glück hat das #Usenet einen langen Atem und zwar #NNTP-inkompatible, aber gut fokussierte Foren sind durch soziale Netze auch nicht verschwunden.
This #Mastodon / #email bridge <https://tacobelllabs.net/@nkizz/110340426573847934> by @nkizz is just brilliant, but you know what would absolutely ROCK? A #Fediverse server that had native support for #IMAP.
While we're on the topic, I wonder if anybody has thought about building a client with an UX inspired by Usenet newsreaders (personally, MicroPlanet Gravity was one of the few things I missed from Windows when I switched to Linux, would love to see something like that for Mastodon.)