Deleting a post vs deleting an entire comment tree

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For context:

  • Two big threadiverse implementors (and probably mbin) currently federate Announce(Delete(Object)) for deletion of content — all synchronized communities follow suit and delete the content as well.
  • If that object is the root-level node, and it is deleted, everything below it is also deleted.
  • Lemmy and Piefed are investigating the possibility of changing this behaviour so that the action deletes the object itself only, and the reply tree stays.

We’re in the middle of discussing how best to communicate this. With Delete(Object) behaviour shifting to deleting the single object only, there are two options to delete the entire tree/thread:

  1. Delete(Object) with a new property with_replies or similar
  2. Remove(Context), where Context is a new url that refers to the entire tree

Thoughts? We’re discussing this tomorrow at ForumWG but it’d be nice to get some eyes on it beforehand.

cc rimu@piefed.social nutomic@lemmy.ml melroy@kbin.melroy.org bentigorlich@gehirneimer.de

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@trwnh I dislike to have to get into the semantics of what "a reply" is, but from my point of view the definition matches any downstream element in a discussion. Why? Because in a discussion context matters, both on a comprehension level and on the pragmatic ActivityPub level, as we can see from the work the threadiverse does. So yes, it's not an immediate reply to its ancestors but it is in the "reply chain" of its ancestors, and that is sufficient for me.

If your worry is about how to deal with this programmatically, check JWZ's message threading algorithm, which gives good solutions even with multiple ancestors.

@julian @helge

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@trwnh an example
for threading based on multiple elements for inReplyTo (using vanilla JavaScript): git.sr.ht/~mariusor/oni/tree/m

This is my last contribution to this discussion, with apologies for the spamming to all that have been dragged into it inadvertently.

@julian @helge

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@mariusor @julian @helge

i'd rather have an actual context for tracking context. from the point of view of being understood, if you said "What's your favorite pie?" and i said "Julian is invited to my house this weekend", then this is a non sequitur.

a real example of multi-reply:

inReplyTo: [
- AT&T tells the FTC it is a common carrier and the FTC has no jurisdiction
- AT&T tells the FCC that it is not a common carrier and is not subject to net neutrality
]
content: AT&T is doublespeaking

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