Forum Platform Domain Knowledge#

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.

Overview#

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.

Core Concepts#

Feed System#

Home Feed#

The home feed provides a personalized experience for each user based on their preferences and subscriptions.

UI:

• UI will be a tiktok style scrollable feed but left to right

Key Features:

• User-specific: Each user sees a unique feed based on their subscriptions
• Community subscription slider: Users can adjust content visibility per community (1-5 scale)
  • 1 = Only show the best/most popular content from this community
  • 5 = Show all content from this community
• Read state tracking: Already read posts are automatically hidden from the feed
  • Requires isRead flag in the lexicon
  • Users can access read posts through a dedicated history tab
    • Store read history in PostgreSQL AppView, NOT in CAR files
    • This data never enters the user's repository
    • Only accessible through authenticated private endpoints

All Feed#

A global feed showing content from across the entire platform.

Key Features:

• Displays all public content from all communities
• Respects read state (hides already-read posts)
• Provides discovery mechanism for new communities and content

Community Feed#

A community feed showing content from a single community.

Key Features:

• Incorporates typical forum feed features such as hot, top (month, day, year), new

Communities#

Communities are the primary organizational unit for content and discussions.

Core Features#

• Creation: Users can create new communities
• Blocking: Users can block communities from appearing in their feeds
• Wiki: Each community maintains its own wiki for documentation
• Subscriptions: Users can subscribe/unsubscribe to communities
• NSFW Toggle: Communities can be marked as NSFW with appropriate filtering

Reputation System#

• User reputation: Gained through community interaction such as creating posts, comments, positive tags
• Member access levels: Reputation affects user privileges
• Comment ordering: Higher reputation may influence comment visibility
• Voting: Voting is more impactful for reputable community members

Rules System#

Communities can enable specific rules to shape content and behavior:

• Rule voting: Community rules are enabled through democratic votes
• Post type restrictions: e.g., "Text Only" communities
• Website blocklists: Prevent specific domains from being shared
• Geolocation restrictions: Limit posting to users in specific locations

Bots and Plugins#

• RSS feed poster: Automatically post content from RSS feeds
• Game thread bots: Automated creation of sports/gaming discussion threads
• Additional open source plugin system for community-specific automation

Moderation Models#

Sortition-Based Moderation#

A democratic approach to content moderation:

• Tag-based removal: Content hidden when enough users tag it as inappropriate, is flagged for tribunal review
• Tribunal system: Posts/accounts that have been tagged go through tribunal review
  • Minimum reputation required to serve

Traditional Moderation#

• Moderator hierarchy: Standard moderator-based enforcement
• Community override: Users can still vote to remove moderators
• Hybrid approach: Even moderator-led communities incorporate user feedback

Flairs#

• Support for post/user flairs (implementation details TBD)

Federation#

Our platform supports bidirectional federation with major protocols.

atproto (Bluesky) Integration#

• Post display: Show Bluesky posts inline with native content
• Backend implementation: Posts stored as references to Bluesky records
• Future roadmap: Comment federation planned (posts-only for initial release)

ActivityPub Integration#

Full two-way compatibility with ActivityPub networks:

• Instance mapping: All AP instances converted to "Hubs"
• Community mapping: AP communities mapped to Coves communities
• User identity: AP users assigned atproto DIDs
• Action translation: Bidirectional conversion between AP actions and Coves lexicon

Posts#

Post Types#

• Text: Traditional text-based discussions
• Video: Video content with discussion threads
• Image: Image posts with comments
• Article: Long-form content/blog posts
• Microblog: Explicitly created for bsky posts

Post Features#

• Voting: Upvote system
• Tagging system: Posts can be tagged (helpful, spam, hostile, etc.)
• Share tracking: Monitor post sharing/distribution
• Comment threads: Each post owns its comment thread
• Federation indicators: Display source platform (Lemmy, Bluesky, Mbin, etc.)

Users#

Identity and Authentication#

• Phone verification: Required for account creation for Coves users (grants verified status)
• Identity system: Uses atproto DID (Decentralized Identifier) system
• Federation: Each user belongs to a federated platform (Bluesky, Lemmy, etc.)

Username System#

• Random generation: When not provided, usernames follow patterns:
  • "Adjective Noun" (e.g., "BraveEagle")
  • "Adjective Adjective Noun" (e.g., "SmallQuietMouse")

User Features#

• Blocking: Users can block other users
• Offline sync: Basic framework for offline functionality
• Notification control: Mute notifications from own posts
• Save posts: Bookmark posts for later reference
• Post history: View all previously seen posts

Future Enhancements#

• Comment federation for Bluesky
• Possibly Mastadon integration
• Extended plugin system for communities
• Edit/History for comments/posts/wiki
• Enhanced offline capabilities
• Incognito browsing
  • Disables browsing history
  • Read state not stored on device
• Community forking process (Theoretically built in via DID's)

Last updated: [Date] Version: 1.0