@benpate One of the reasons we're supporting NodeBB is their adoption of ActivityPub, and @julian is leading efforts around forum-based AP implementations if you want to follow it.

I think interconnectedness is a double-edge sword, so my own work in the community space right now is focused on private community organizing with only very selective feed-based connections.

@benpate My big asterisk is that a private non-federated Masto server translates for sure, that just begs the question why they were using Masto in the first place.

@benpate "Non-forum" yes, but not really Masto. The fediverse/AP is organized around *individual* data sovereignty, which is great, but is solving portability at scale using a universally-recognized *identity*. You can move YOUR account, but not everyone else's, because context is global.

Nitro Porter is trying to solve *collective* data sovereignty — as a group, what do we want to do with our shared data — which doesn't make sense outside *private* context.

I am not sure Mastodon translates.

@benpate I need to update that guide for the upcoming 5.0 release (likely in July) because I've improved abstraction so much in the last 6 months it's made many things much easier to follow & debug.

Backwards compatibility requirements make big changes like that very iterative but I finally got there.

If someone wants to add support in the meantime, I'm always happy to chat and answer questions.

@benpate Sure: https://github.com/prosembler/nitro-porter

My biggest wish for any project is to build in their own tools for recalculating derived data — post counts, point totals, last post in a topic, etc.

Most apps assume you've never used any other platform or that their calculated data could be wrong. It's a huge time sink to "fix" data handling for them in an export.

To add support to Nitro Porter directly, there's a guide in the docs: https://nitroporter.org/develop.html

@smallcircles If you wanted to do that today, I suggest migrating to a platform with read-only mode. Usually it's for upgrades, but you could just leave it 'on' forever.

I could see a static HTML export one day, but it's a bigger lift because there's no framework for presentation logic today. Then, of course, folks would have feelings about theming.

If I did, I'd perhaps pair it with a scraping feature so it's not as irreversible & "orphaned" as a feature.

Interesting idea!

@luceos Thanks! Discourse is in scope for the grant as a new Target platform, but my lowest-priority goal.

Typically I add platforms as a Source first because it's easier, but I was trying to prioritize some high-visibility items I'd be unlikely to do this year otherwise and are harder to sponsor as 1-offs due to scope. Source = $, Target = $$$

If I modify the scope later because an existing goal isn't panning out, that's high on my list to get in there. It's inevitable, it's just timing.

Delighted to announce my project Nitro Porter, the only multi-platform community migration tool, was awarded a grant through the Open Social Fund established by @nlnet

Since last autumn, I've explored a proof-of-concept for adding Discord as a "source" for migrations, the first time it's supported non-database exports.

This funding will greatly expedite development & release of that feature, as well as adding new open source "targets" for migrations, starting with @nodebb.

More news soon!