Gregory's Server@Gargron I'm baffled that they (and you, come to that) still use webfinger instead of profile URLs
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8 comments
@trwnh @Gargron I don't mean the @ syntax that you type, that's reasonable and autocompletes well, but as mastodon turns them into URL links when published, encouraging people to share the thing with 2 @'s rather then the URL elsewhere is very confusing, and using the webfinger protocol to map between them rather than a simple string replacement is unneeded overhead.  @kevinmarks that's only true for mastodon URLs -- remote servers could have `@a@trwnh.com` map to `https://ap.trwnh.com/317390182739802718903` via webfinger, which contains neither the original username nor the original domain name. the `@user@domain` is the easiest way for people to share with people without worrying about what URL it will resolve to on the backend (or, in mastodon's case, *not* resolve to -- mastodon uses webfinger as canonical address, unfortunately, since it predates activitypub) @trwnh No, urls are the easiest to share, as you can click on them. And they resolve to have links in, which code can look for as well as people. @kevinmarks oh hmm, both trwnh.com and abdullahtarawneh.com are green ticks for me over here as far as webfinger resolving, i was giving a hypothetical example that is currently not valid but might be valid in the future when i get around to actually implementing my new (dynamic) website :roundboi: currently i just have *.trwnh.com dns resolving to trwnh.com and any unrecognized resource maps to 404 via nginx @kevinmarks fwiw what i was trying to say is that the human-friendly identifier (webfinger) should resolve to the machine-friendly identifier (activitypub id, which can be reasonably resolved via https and parsed by code) @trwnh but it isn't human friendly. @kevinmarks well again, that's dealing purely within the realm of mastodon, which i think we can agree does not strictly *need* webfinger, but i still think it is useful for interop note that the mastodon web domain and webfinger domain do not have to be the same, either -- i could host mastodon.trwnh.com and have a profile at mastodon.trwnh.com/@a, but still use the webfinger address a@trwnh.com for consistency with my email and xmpp (although with that said, i do not wish to run mastodon....) |
@kevinmarks @Gargron webfinger is easier to understand for users imo, it just shouldn't be canonical (it should be a pointer to some other, more stable identifier). there's nothing wrong with just using webfinger, at least as a way of addressing people