Things in my mind are starting to come together in re making a possible OStatus implementation. I need to familiarize myself with things a bit more.
I'm trying to develop in my head what I want things to do and how to do them. So the gears are going.
I'm probably gonna get out a notepad and sketch down things as I think of them. This is a pretty complicated thing and I want to get it as right as possible.
I'm definitely going to need to figure out how to do pubsub worker stuff.
ALSO I PROMISE NOTHING.
Don't construe anything here as a promise.
I'm autistic and my interests shift quickly.
Also federated search btw = not happening. Too fucking load intensive. Too much traffic. Like I don't even think Mastodon could or SHOULD do it.
If I do this OStatus implementation, it's going to be limited to your local instance and what toots have been seen. You'll get a warning of course.
To search remotely is a path of madness.
@tom 1200 instances and counting.
Yeah, imagine trying to do THAT.
Holy fuck the round trips.
I think a lot of providers would think you're launching a DDoS attack.
With the requests of 500k+ users hammering down on each server, they'd buckle.
100% not viable.
@tom I mean I COULD imagine having like... a federated LIMITED search. Like, you can search on a specific server from your instance. But that's about it.
@Elizafox yeahhh but idk how I feel about that
search is kinda all or nothing, only showing a specific set of results would confuse users and lead them to think that it's broken
@Elizafox it's easy to explain to somebody who knows the technology behind it but explaining "oh you can only search on this very specific list of instances" to someone who just wants to use the tool doesn't sound too easy
@tom I'd put up a notice in the search box:
"NOTE: You can only search toots that this instance has seen. Not all toots may be visible."
@tom Then link to a more specific explanation of why they want is virtually impossible without putting severe load on the network.
@tom There is also the option of federated searches, BUT, token bucket limiting them. Which is semi-user hostile, but Reddit does the same thing tbh.
@Elizafox I agree with you in some way... Sadly, I think that some degree of federated search will be needed having in count that trending topics are the driving force of this kind of networks, and to do that you should be able to get related Toots from others instances
@wcsantos It's easier to just allow searching for toots you've received. That's probably what most users are going to want anyway.
I think that remote searching is easily accomplished by just having an endpoint where you can search user's toots, or directing them to the server's search page for that user.
This is not an easy problem and user usability and intuitiveness has to be balanced with "incredible load this will put the system under."
@Elizafox I've been thinking about that myself and it's
Just Not Viable