this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2023
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I thought the LemmyBB UI was the perfect solution to this. But what I am missing in Lemmy (vs. Reddit) is a root, or an aggregated search for public Lemmy communities. I understand that private groups would have to be excluded (or, if the community should be found, but membership is moderated, then make the address searcheable, but the content access-controlled).
Currently, it seems that I have to search each single public instance from the Lemmy directory manually in order to find and add a community to my personal forum home view (?). I do not see the benefit in this, so I prefer to read and post to Lemmy communities from Hubzilla (I just add them as a connection, or "follow them" in Masto speak). Actually, I can even search Hubzilla's Zot network for group channels on other instances (like communities), without leaving my own instance. But unfortunately not Lemmy's AP network. But I cannot do this from Lemmy or LemmyBB, either.
Do you know how this kind of federated community search is implemented in terms of Activitypub?
@nutomic
In case you meant me:
Hubzilla has its own protocol (Zot) and network, but is interoperable with most of the AP network. But the federated search is implemented by searching the public channels on public instances registered in directory servers (i.e. that want to be found), which is implemented only in Hubzilla servers, so AFAIK, AP contacts have to be entered explicitly by their webbie, instead. The directory servers (I am aware of four) are synchronized, so they are redundant.
In (streams), AFAIK this was changed to a more implicit search that browses the instances of your ID's contacts (and contacts of contacts, to a configurable depths - which makes it more decentral, but also more context-/channel-dependent, and consumes more capacity than browsing a central register).
This search is highly configurable and integrated into the apps' UI. So you just search from your channel's interface, and click "add as contact" (which includes group channels => like "subscribe to community").
Do you by any chance know how Hubzilla or Streams retrieve a list of channels from a given instance? Do they make a request to a specific path or something similar? And do you have a link to these directory servers, to see how they work?