Reduced engagement due to Article type
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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 ([...]).
Gli ultimi otto messaggi ricevuti dalla Federazione
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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.
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@julian @saskia @evan
The only way to give hashtags uniqueness and Semantik.Bad practice: use just words.
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There are a couple of parallel development efforts tackling the problem of hashtags. The main drawback is that while you can use them in your posts and search for them to find additional content, the reach and visibility of the hashtag is restricted to that of the instance's own visibility.
In other words, looking up a hashtag on your instance probably would not give you a complete view of the use of that hashtag worldwide.
@newsmast@newsmast.social channels The first I'd heard of it was Newsmast's "channels". How they worked was opaque to me, but after seeing @saskia@backend.newsmast.org's presentation, I now know it is collating use of hashtags into a broader topic (e.g. #Asenal, #AFC, plus many others into "Arsenal") tags.pub @evan@cosocial.ca came up to me after FediMTL and asked whether I'd looked into his FOSDEM presentation about tags.pub, which aims to do something similar, although user-facing. Users can follow individual "tag" actors and they then receive all content tagged as such. I will have to watch the presentation as tags.pub is headless and has no landing page! :laughing: FediBuzz Relay ActivityPub.Space is following this approach, where I set up NodeBB to subscribe to a couple of relevant FediBuzz relays: #activitypub, #fedidev, #fediadmin, #fedimod and #fedimodsIt's interesting to follow the convergent evolution of solutions to solve a single problem. Right now NodeBB gives you the tools to set up the FediBuzz relay connection + auto-categorization rules, but it's not exactly user-friendly for admins.
The ideal flow would be something much more high level for admins. An additional field during category creation where they can specify hashtags they'd like to follow globally. Simple, understandable, hides all the backend complexity away.
It is worth looking into additional solutions (like tags.pub or the Newsmast channels) so as to not be tied to a single provider in the backend.
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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 ([...]).
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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.
