Deleting a post vs deleting an entire comment tree

[julian@activitypub.space]

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

[thisismissem@activitypub.space]

What if instead of doing the Announce, the requestor of the object did a like Subscribe? i.e., "I've had this object federated to me (either by user-lookup or boost from another server), you don't know I know about this object, so I'd like to inform you so that you can send me updates on this object in the future"

[thisismissem@activitypub.space]

julian said in Deleting a post vs deleting an entire comment tree:
> If that object is the root-level node, and it is deleted, everything below it is also deleted.

Why would everything below be deleted? Would it not simply become orphaned?

[jdp23@neuromatch.social]

On most forums (and forum-inspired social networks like the old tribe.net or Facebook groups), the first post represents the root of the thread, so when you delete it it deletes the entire thread.

Misskey and *key forks are like this too. Ask me how I know! loslob.

@thisismissem

[flamingos@feddit.uk]

I've got a PR for removing an entire comment thread for Lemmy mostly ready, I just need to write the tests and decide on how this exact problem should work, so the timing is honestly impeccable. The things I've been debating between are:

1. Same as option 1, a new property like removeChildren;
2. Make the target of the Delete an array. I'm honestly 50/50 on whether this is actually spec compliant, it's not clear to me that it isn't;
3. Just sending out an individual Delete for every Object. I like this option the least, but it is very easy to implement and needs no changes in other software to work.

[rimu@piefed.social]

Either of those first two sound fine.