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Hubzilla DevelopmentBased on the discussion started by RockyIII on the support channel:
As I'm reading Mike's comments on the RockyIII post in @
Hubzilla Support Forum :
if you enable federation you basically can't really use anything that makes Hubzilla great. Nomadic identity doesn't work. Privacy controls on most anything don't work (photos, media, webpages, wikis, chats, events, whatever) because people in other networks cannot access them.
It dawned on me that "Federated Hubzilla" and "Zot Only Hubzilla" are really two different things in some very significant ways and yet we don't really actively distinguish this. Rather we tend to talk about this single thing, "Hubzilla".
While the internal workings of Hubzilla are the same, the effects of Federation make for a very different user experience. For example, it sounds to me like "privacy groups" in a federated environment, really aren't "privacy groups" at all but merely "distribution groups." Is that correct?
One thing that may be considered is to recognized the reality that "Federated Hubzilla" and "Zot Only" are truly distinct and find ways to make that more clear in our conversations (perhaps even having a separate "Federation Updates" in release notes/etc.) and perhaps also do some things from a UI perspective. The basic message that seems to need reinforcing is, "Federation changes what you should expect from Hubzilla." If this is so, by making our language clear about it, we would be able to talk more directly about the tradeoffs and how to manage those tradeoffs. It also would give us a way to more clearly define "the main thing" about Hubzilla and keep that "the main thing."
Such discussions may even find it's way into UI elements that make the behavior differences clear. For example, if my assertion above is correct (that Federation essentially makes "privacy groups" into "distribution groups"), perhaps add a "Federate" toggle to the right of the submit button. The effect of the toggle would be: (1) Produces a popup that makes clear that "Federated" items are fundamentally PUBLIC items that (in some cases) may be restricted in distribution by choosing a "distribution group". (also giving an option, "hide this warning in the future") (2) For those things where it makes sense (eg. posts), change the LOCK icon to something of a "group of people" icon showing that you are not choosing "privacy options" you are choosing a "distribution group". (3) For those things where making an item visible to the Fediverse requires the object to be PUBLIC and a post will not be generated by the action, remove the lock icon entirely and simply sets the ACL to Public. (4) Perhaps change the color of the textbox background (for posts) to indicate the choice to use a less secure/private distribution mechanism.
Of course, these are just thoughts, and are predicated on a specific understanding of "how it works"... so feel free to correct me or slice and dice as needed to reflect reality.