[UX Question] Replies vs Comments

[DeadSuperHero]

I wasn't sure whether to open this in the Friends repo or on here, because they both work together for social interactions.

The Issue

Replies and Mentions from the Fediverse are represented in two different ways when using Friends and ActivityPub-WordPress plugins together. ActivityPub-WordPress tends to represent replies to articles as Comments, but sometimes these instead get represented as a Friends Posts post type with the Friends plugin. When Enable Mastodon Apps gets thrown into the mix, it can make debugging quite challenging!

This actually makes it somewhat difficult to see where certain responses are being handled and stored. It also raises some questions as to whether there ought to be a single, standardized way for handling Fediverse interactions.

Other Considerations

Complicating things further, a number of different types of comments can get represented within social contexts as well. For example, our blog leverages WebMentions and PingBacks, and these can get treated as comments even though they are not social interactions or part of a conversation.

It may be worthwhile to think about whether there's a more unified way to handle mentions and replies for social interaction contexts. I will also open this issue up on the Friends repo as well.

[DeadSuperHero]

Related discussion for Friends here: akirk/friends#486

[jeherve]

As an active user of Friends and ActivityPub, I've been struggling with the same concerns.

Even when only using ActivityPub, it can get tricky.

1. If I use the Federated Reply block in a new post to reply to someone on the Fediverse, my reply to them will be stored as a post.
2. If they reply to me, their reply is stored as a comment.
3. At that point, I have 2 ways (3 if using Friends) to continue the conversation and reply to them:
   • I can comment to reply to their comment from my site, and my reply will be federated.
   • I can publish a new post with another Federated Reply block, replying to them, and my reply will be federated.
   • If I use Friends I can reply to them via the Friends page or a Fediverse app if I also use the EMA plugin.

All those options work, but it would be nice to agree on a common approach so things are easier to understand and to extend in the future.