Reduced engagement due to Article type
Technical Discussion
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NodeBB federates out
NoteorArticledepending on the length of the content. While this by-and-large works, the article logic does not encourage as much discussion as expected because asummaryis generated so as to provide something for microblog-style software to show (otherwise, it would only show the title (name) and a URL to the forum.)That summary is limited to a maximum or 500 characters, ending at the last full detected sentence. [...]
When composing a long topic, 500 characters may not be enough to fully introduce the topic and engage users. This lowers click-through rates.
N.B. Note the above, where I manually added a
[...]because that is where NodeBB would cut content short. When only those 500 characters are read, it's not the best introduction to this topic.I expressed my frustration about this online to @thisismissem and suggested that I might just revert back to sending the entire post content in
summary. This would violate FEP b2b8's recommendation that summary be a maximum of 500 characters:> It should be a maximum of about 500 characters; a few sentences; or a short paragraph.
After consultation with Matt Baer of Writefreely (@matt@writing.exchange), he suggested the following changes:
- Append a
[...]at the end of the truncated content to signal that there is additional content that is not seen - Allow the use of a magic string (like an HTML comment: ``) that would allow power users to manually select where the summary should end. This would still allow for summaries over 500 characters.
That seems like a good compromise for me, where concerns from power users like myself would be addressed, while not overly complicating the interface for users who do not need to know about this.
Pinging @evan ([@evan@cosocial.ca](https://activitypub.space/user/evan%40cosocial.ca)) for his thoughts.
- Append a
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@julian@activitypub.space You could also extend the leeway for Note conversion while keeping the summary length, that feels like a potentially useful option.
By that I mean letting posts with a length of n>500 (700? 1000?) through as a Note, but still cutting the summary at 500 if it's even longer. Avoids the situation where there's like one sentence cut off.
I do like the manual <!-- break --> though, I picked that habit up from some CMS decades ago and still use it on my own blog.
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@julian@activitypub.space You could also extend the leeway for Note conversion while keeping the summary length, that feels like a potentially useful option.
By that I mean letting posts with a length of n>500 (700? 1000?) through as a Note, but still cutting the summary at 500 if it's even longer. Avoids the situation where there's like one sentence cut off.
I do like the manual <!-- break --> though, I picked that habit up from some CMS decades ago and still use it on my own blog.
@julian@fietkau.social yes, that is another adjustment I was going to add. Right now the cut-off is hard-coded to 500, but this could be adjusted by the admin based on preference.
Perhaps this could even be allowed at the user level, but I am loathe to add additional options to the UCP lest it end up looking like an airplane cockpit :laughing:
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@julian So, there are a few ways to handle this.
First, the b2b8 recommendation on the summary is just a guideline, not a strict requirement (thus the 'about'). A common practice in news-style text is that the first paragraph is a lede that summarizes the article's main points.
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@julian So, there are a few ways to handle this.
First, the b2b8 recommendation on the summary is just a guideline, not a strict requirement (thus the 'about'). A common practice in news-style text is that the first paragraph is a lede that summarizes the article's main points.
For example, in this article, "Lawrence Summers Will Resign From Harvard After Epstein Revelations" (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/us/larry-summers-resignation-harvard-epstein.html), the first paragraph is:
> Lawrence H. Summers, a Harvard University economist and the school’s former president, will resign from teaching at the end of the academic year, according to a Harvard spokesman.
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For example, in this article, "Lawrence Summers Will Resign From Harvard After Epstein Revelations" (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/us/larry-summers-resignation-harvard-epstein.html), the first paragraph is:
> Lawrence H. Summers, a Harvard University economist and the school’s former president, will resign from teaching at the end of the academic year, according to a Harvard spokesman.
Some bloggers follow a similar practice, especially since blogging software often uses the first paragraph as the summary in RSS and Atom feeds.
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Some bloggers follow a similar practice, especially since blogging software often uses the first paragraph as the summary in RSS and Atom feeds.
For generating a summary for long-form text, I'd suggest these techniques in rough order:
- Let the user to define a summary manually - either with a marker in the text, or with a separate input element
- Use the whole text if it meets the rough guidelines (~1 paragraph, a few sentences, about 500 chars) in b2b8.
- Use the first paragraph if it meets the rough guidelines (a few sentences, about 500 chars) in b2b8.
- Truncate the first paragraph and include an ellipsis ([...]). -
For generating a summary for long-form text, I'd suggest these techniques in rough order:
- Let the user to define a summary manually - either with a marker in the text, or with a separate input element
- Use the whole text if it meets the rough guidelines (~1 paragraph, a few sentences, about 500 chars) in b2b8.
- Use the first paragraph if it meets the rough guidelines (a few sentences, about 500 chars) in b2b8.
- Truncate the first paragraph and include an ellipsis ([...]).@julian Finally, this seems like a very appropriate place to use LLMs if you're open to it. LLMs do a pretty good job summarizing medium-sized texts, like blog posts, wiki pages, etc.
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@julian So, there are a few ways to handle this.
First, the b2b8 recommendation on the summary is just a guideline, not a strict requirement (thus the 'about').
A common practice in news-style text is that the first paragraph is a lede that summarizes the article's main points.
For example, in this article, Lawrence Summers Will Resign From Harvard After Epstein Revelations, the first paragraph is:
> Lawrence H. Summers, a Harvard University economist and the school’s former president, will resign from teaching at the end of the academic year, according to a Harvard spokesman.
Some bloggers follow a similar practice, especially since blogging software often uses the first paragraph as the summary in RSS and Atom feeds.
I think if I were generating a summary for long-form text, I'd use these techniques in roughly descending order:
- Manual override; an optional way for the user to define a summary manually - either with a marker in the text, or with a separate input element (I think WordPress does this).
- Use the whole text if it meets the rough guidelines (~1 paragraph, a few sentences, about 500 chars) in b2b8.
- Use the first paragraph if it meets the rough guidelines (a few sentences, about 500 chars) in b2b8.
- Truncate the first paragraph and include an ellipsis ().
This is also something that LLMs are pretty good at. So, maybe rather than truncating (last option), consider using an LLM to generate a summary that meets the boundary requirements.
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@julian So, there are a few ways to handle this.
First, the b2b8 recommendation on the summary is just a guideline, not a strict requirement (thus the 'about').
A common practice in news-style text is that the first paragraph is a lede that summarizes the article's main points.
For example, in this article, Lawrence Summers Will Resign From Harvard After Epstein Revelations, the first paragraph is:
> Lawrence H. Summers, a Harvard University economist and the school’s former president, will resign from teaching at the end of the academic year, according to a Harvard spokesman.
Some bloggers follow a similar practice, especially since blogging software often uses the first paragraph as the summary in RSS and Atom feeds.
I think if I were generating a summary for long-form text, I'd use these techniques in roughly descending order:
- Manual override; an optional way for the user to define a summary manually - either with a marker in the text, or with a separate input element (I think WordPress does this).
- Use the whole text if it meets the rough guidelines (~1 paragraph, a few sentences, about 500 chars) in b2b8.
- Use the first paragraph if it meets the rough guidelines (a few sentences, about 500 chars) in b2b8.
- Truncate the first paragraph and include an ellipsis ().
This is also something that LLMs are pretty good at. So, maybe rather than truncating (last option), consider using an LLM to generate a summary that meets the boundary requirements.
@evan that makes sense. I've just updated NodeBB to allow for the use of a manual override marker. The limit and even the marker is now customizable per-instance, and I do use the ellipsis when truncating text.
Hopefully that resolves the engagement issue while still preserving the intent of b2b8 :smile:
As for the use of an LLM to generate a summary, I think I will defer on that, since that might be a source of surprise for those not expecting the invocation of a LLM :sweat_smile:
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@evan that makes sense. I've just updated NodeBB to allow for the use of a manual override marker. The limit and even the marker is now customizable per-instance, and I do use the ellipsis when truncating text.
Hopefully that resolves the engagement issue while still preserving the intent of b2b8 :smile:
As for the use of an LLM to generate a summary, I think I will defer on that, since that might be a source of surprise for those not expecting the invocation of a LLM :sweat_smile:
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@julian So, there are a few ways to handle this.
First, the b2b8 recommendation on the summary is just a guideline, not a strict requirement (thus the 'about').
A common practice in news-style text is that the first paragraph is a lede that summarizes the article's main points.
For example, in this article, Lawrence Summers Will Resign From Harvard After Epstein Revelations, the first paragraph is:
> Lawrence H. Summers, a Harvard University economist and the school’s former president, will resign from teaching at the end of the academic year, according to a Harvard spokesman.
Some bloggers follow a similar practice, especially since blogging software often uses the first paragraph as the summary in RSS and Atom feeds.
I think if I were generating a summary for long-form text, I'd use these techniques in roughly descending order:
Manual override; an optional way for the user to define a summary manually - either with a marker in the text, or with a separate input element (I think WordPress does this). Use the whole text if it meets the rough guidelines (~1 paragraph, a few sentences, about 500 chars) in b2b8. Use the first paragraph if it meets the rough guidelines (a few sentences, about 500 chars) in b2b8. Truncate the first paragraph and include an ellipsis ().This is also something that LLMs are pretty good at. So, maybe rather than truncating (last option), consider using an LLM to generate a summary that meets the boundary requirements.
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Hey @evan@cosocial.ca, I'm watching your lightning talk at FOSDEM! I'm simultaneously glad it's less than 10 minutes, but sad it's not longer too :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:
(Everyone else, want to watch it? Here it is)
Some questions I'm jotting down while I'm watching it
I can see the user on ActivityPub.Space, which is how it's supposed to work. Would I be able to follow this user from a non-Person? If integrating into NodeBB, I'd maybe want the Application actor itself to follow it.
Love how you head off concerns about consent issues with a slide about how it's not scraping, mass-following, etc. So it uses relays, such as the ones on relaylist.com?
Let's talk about how we can get NodeBB sharing data to tags.pub by default (or by admin opt-out switch.
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@julian @saskia @evan or do you think that anybody knows , that #stupidhashtag in the system is https://mastodon.social/tags/stupidhashtag and it's type is https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams/hashtag
But as far as I know, this type is not specified at all!
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@julian @saskia @evan A tag, a hashtag, a SKOS concept, all IRI or URL! Users don't see the concept behind it. If we developers do it right!
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@naturzukunft2026@mastodon.social absolutely not, sorry.
For the simple reason that it requires user education, and ain't nobody going to go around teaching 7bn people how to use SKOS.
The beauty (and admittedly a downside and source of a lot of noise) is the hashtag's ubiquity and simplicity. Anyone can make one, anyone can name it whatever they want.
