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# Forum Platform Domain Knowledge
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This document serves as the central reference for domain-specific knowledge about our forum platform. It should be maintained and updated as the platform evolves.
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Our forum platform is a federated discussion system that combines traditional forum features with modern federation protocols (atproto and ActivityPub). The platform emphasizes user control, community autonomy, and cross-platform interoperability.
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The home feed provides a personalized experience for each user based on their preferences and subscriptions.
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- UI will be a tiktok style scrollable feed but left to right
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- **User-specific**: Each user sees a unique feed based on their subscriptions
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- **Community subscription slider**: Users can adjust content visibility per community (1-5 scale)
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- 1 = Only show the best/most popular content from this community
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- 5 = Show all content from this community
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- **Read state tracking**: Already read posts are automatically hidden from the feed
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- Requires `isRead` flag in the lexicon
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- Users can access read posts through a dedicated history tab
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- Store read history in PostgreSQL AppView, NOT in CAR files
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- This data never enters the user's repository
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- Only accessible through authenticated private endpoints
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A global feed showing content from across the entire platform.
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- Displays all public content from all communities
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- Respects read state (hides already-read posts)
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- Provides discovery mechanism for new communities and content
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A community feed showing content from a single community.
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- Incorporates typical forum feed features such as hot, top (month, day, year), new
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Communities are the primary organizational unit for content and discussions.
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- **Creation**: Users can create new communities
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- **Blocking**: Users can block communities from appearing in their feeds
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- **Wiki**: Each community maintains its own wiki for documentation
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- **Subscriptions**: Users can subscribe/unsubscribe to communities
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- **NSFW Toggle**: Communities can be marked as NSFW with appropriate filtering
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- **User reputation**: Gained through community interaction such as creating posts, comments, positive tags
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- **Member access levels**: Reputation affects user privileges
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- **Comment ordering**: Higher reputation may influence comment visibility
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- **Voting**: Voting is more impactful for reputable community members
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Communities can enable specific rules to shape content and behavior:
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- **Rule voting**: Community rules are enabled through democratic votes
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- **Post type restrictions**: e.g., "Text Only" communities
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- **Website blocklists**: Prevent specific domains from being shared
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- **Geolocation restrictions**: Limit posting to users in specific locations
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- **RSS feed poster**: Automatically post content from RSS feeds
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- **Game thread bots**: Automated creation of sports/gaming discussion threads
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- Additional open source plugin system for community-specific automation
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##### Sortition-Based Moderation
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A democratic approach to content moderation:
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- **Tag-based removal**: Content hidden when enough users tag it as inappropriate, is flagged for tribunal review
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- **Tribunal system**: Posts/accounts that have been tagged go through tribunal review
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- Minimum reputation required to serve
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##### Traditional Moderation
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- **Moderator hierarchy**: Standard moderator-based enforcement
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- **Community override**: Users can still vote to remove moderators
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- **Hybrid approach**: Even moderator-led communities incorporate user feedback
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- Support for post/user flairs (implementation details TBD)
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Our platform supports bidirectional federation with major protocols.
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#### atproto (Bluesky) Integration
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- **Post display**: Show Bluesky posts inline with native content
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- **Backend implementation**: Posts stored as references to Bluesky records
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- **Future roadmap**: Comment federation planned (posts-only for initial release)
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#### ActivityPub Integration
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Full two-way compatibility with ActivityPub networks:
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- **Instance mapping**: All AP instances converted to "Hubs"
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- **Community mapping**: AP communities mapped to Coves communities
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- **User identity**: AP users assigned atproto DIDs
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- **Action translation**: Bidirectional conversion between AP actions and Coves lexicon
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- **Text**: Traditional text-based discussions
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- **Video**: Video content with discussion threads
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- **Image**: Image posts with comments
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- **Article**: Long-form content/blog posts
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- **Microblog**: Explicitly created for bsky posts
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- **Voting**: Upvote system
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- **Tagging system**: Posts can be tagged (helpful, spam, hostile, etc.)
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- **Share tracking**: Monitor post sharing/distribution
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- **Comment threads**: Each post owns its comment thread
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- **Federation indicators**: Display source platform (Lemmy, Bluesky, Mbin, etc.)
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#### Identity and Authentication
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- **Phone verification**: Required for account creation for Coves users (grants verified status)
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- **Identity system**: Uses atproto DID (Decentralized Identifier) system
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- **Federation**: Each user belongs to a federated platform (Bluesky, Lemmy, etc.)
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- **Random generation**: When not provided, usernames follow patterns:
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- "Adjective Noun" (e.g., "BraveEagle")
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- "Adjective Adjective Noun" (e.g., "SmallQuietMouse")
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- **Blocking**: Users can block other users
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- **Offline sync**: Basic framework for offline functionality
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- **Notification control**: Mute notifications from own posts
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- **Save posts**: Bookmark posts for later reference
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- **Post history**: View all previously seen posts
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- Comment federation for Bluesky
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- Possibly Mastadon integration
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- Extended plugin system for communities
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- Edit/History for comments/posts/wiki
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- Enhanced offline capabilities
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- Disables browsing history
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- Read state not stored on device
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- Community forking process (Theoretically built in via DID's)
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