Synthesizing Social Media/First Breakout Session

Back up to Synthesizing Social Media

Possible Topics

• ActivityPub with Linked Data??
• Using Braid - https://braid.org/point
• A System for Interleaving Discussion and Summarization in Online Collaboration

Patching on top of masto

First pass

• Using the profile tags to be able to assign prefixes to a digital object
  • So say i have paper:paper url in my profile
• Then being able to refer to that object using @jonny:paper in a post
• And then posts beneath that use that as the subject when resolving [ [Semantic::wikilinks] ]

Second pass

• Metadata tag in masto profile that links to a wiki page
  • wiki:https://synthesis-infrastuctures.wiki/Jonny_Saunders
• Page has a series of Property:Tag annotatations that link a short tag to a further page or URL. The linked page could have additional metadata like DOIs, authors, etc.
  • [[Tag::shortname::Longer Page Name]]
• Posting a thread with the first post using a syntax like @jonny:wiki:shortname then treats posts underneath that as having that as the subject, and a bot then scoops those up and puts them in the page enabling the use of semantic wikilinks, etc.
• A bot then is monitoring opt-in accounts for these kinds of threads and exporting them to the relevant wiki page as subpages containing the threads.
  • Like the WikiBot, additional Wikilinks within the thread also embed a link to the thread (probably want to have the thread be its own page then, and have some syntax for declaring a title)
• The bot could also have interoperable export formats out to Braid, etc.

TODO during the workshop

• Deploy a glitch-soc instance in the synthesis-infrastructures domain to test
• Write the above bot and make relevant wiki components :)

Further integration into client

• UX elements to be able to select and resolve tags for a given author within the instance that has enabled this syntax.
• An overlay could search for linked wikis and work backwards - so given a DOI, find the page with the [[Has DOI::...]] page and then overlay the threads underneath it.

Use cases

• Shorthand identifiers using profile metadata (as above)
• Using semantic links in streams headed by shorthand identifiers
• Attention data on reading: taking eg. zotero and converting that to a post stream or something

Mastodon/Twitter Paper announcement use case

• One of the common norms that have developed on academic social media (Twitter/Mastodon) is announcement/summary threads of one’s paper. e.g.: https://hci.social/web/@Mor/109309396530932422 (others of interest: job market announcements, taking PhD announcements)
• Imagine if you could create for yourself a unique, short, readable identifier for a paper, and add that in your post thread about your paper announcement.
  • Possible syntax:
    • @mor:crisis-informatics user namespace
      • downsides: there are multiple authors, so an author may feel left out if another author's id gets used more often or authors could coalesce around one author (ie, 1st author)
    • #cscw22:crisis-informatics conference namespace
      • downsides: possibility for name conflicts, you could use the conference ID but it's not very readable
• Things you could do as a result:
  • Presentation: put all your different paper threads on your academic webpage and associated with each paper, for example
  • Synthesis: collect all the paper announcements for a conference/topic and organize/synthesize it using other tools
  • Discussion: people could reference your identifier in their conversations, and a bot could post the paper announcement thread as a reply (https://hci.social/web/@lewischuang/109331737391363720)
  • Discussion: you could collect all discussion around your paper in a separate place, or a bot could post pingbacks on the original paper announcement thread

Sharing attention data on ActivityPub through Zotero (?) extension

• Attention data (~digital pheromone trails) is an important step in the knowledge synthesis pipeline- what am I looking at and my assessment of it
• Sharing attention data using linked data over ActivityPub-
  • Pros- catching Mastodon wave, good expressivity but
  • Cons- writing it manually creates friction and so reduces usage by researchers
• An extension can create automatic linked data posts based on existing user activity in Zotero
  • Adding a paper to a reading list
  • Tagging
  • Annotating inline, connecting pieces to other papers
  • Reviewing/assessing/endorsing content
• Question - what are interesting downstream applications for attention data?
  • Content recommendation
  • Layering paper viewers with endorsements/reviews, popular tags & annotations
• References
  • Opportunities and Challenges Around a Tool for Social and Public Web Activity Tracking
  • From Users to (Sense)Makers: On the Pivotal Role of Stigmergic Social Annotation in the Quest for Collective Sensemaking