Does anyone have any experience with both #NodeBB 's and #Discourse 's #ActivityPub / #Fediverse integrations? I am wondering what each can and cannot do. I am familiar with NodeBB's federation but not with Discourse's one. It would be great if there was a comparison chart, but I haven't managed to find anything like that. Thanks!
Post
@panos discourse's federation is reallllllly lacking and has a ton of issues. I wouldn't recommend it at the moment unless you are already running an instance and you want to try it out
Re: Does anyone have any experience with both #NodeBB 's and #Discourse 's #ActivityPub / #Fediverse integrations?
@panos@calckey.world how detailed do you want me to get 😝
@julian@activitypub.space haha, just the main differences! I have gathered that in Discourse you can't follow fedi users, and you can't be followed as a Discourse user from fedi, which is a huge difference in favor of NodeBB (although, as you know, I'm facing serious issues with this feature, which makes me a little reluctant to suggest NodeBB for its fedi integration - https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/issues/13840 ). Hopefully this will be solved at some point, so what are the rest of the big differences? =)
Re: Does anyone have any experience with both #NodeBB 's and #Discourse 's #ActivityPub / #Fediverse integrations?
@panos@calckey.world can you test group federation again? Much has changed since you opened that issue.
@julian@activitypub.space in the two groups I follow, the last post seems to be 9 and 10 days ago, whereas both have had new posts daily since then. I unfollowed and refollowed them, to see if it changes anything. BTW I think I found a bug in the process: "View original" for this group https://community.nodebb.org/category/showerthoughts@lemmy.world seems to point back to the same (nodebb) page.
But it's not just with groups, I'm having serious issues with accounts too. My profile: https://community.nodebb.org/user/panos shows I have no followers, but if you click it it shows 3. "Following" says 7 but shows 4. My main (firefish) account (which I follow) shows 0 posts in NodeBB, while I'm posting daily more or less: https://community.nodebb.org/user/panos@electricrequiem.com
It also shows that this user joined on 25 Nov 2025, but was last online on 8 Sept 2025 🙄
I followed my NodeBB account from Mastodon, it went through as expected. I try to follow it from Firefish and Sharkey, they show "pending" and don't go through (and ok, Firefish is abandoned, but Sharkey is a popular platform - and I suspect the same probably happens with the upstream Misskey).
All of those render my account completely unusable for federation. And it's not that I might have screwed something up with the setup of NodeBB, this is on your official community, that you are maintaining. I understand that I might be the exception and other users probably have a flawless experience, but it's hard to take the risk that some users may face similar problems. I really think it's important to figure out what causes these issues and to iron them out.
@julian@activitypub.space oh and also World has recently decided to show all incoming posts, similar to the Global/All servers timelines in other platforms, instead of posts from the accounts I follow. I can't seem to find a way to get a feed of accounts I follow.
@julian@activitypub.space do you have any updates on this? Sorry if I'm being pushy, but there are two communities where I want to suggest NodeBB, but I really can't do it if there is a possibility of accounts getting so messed up on the fedi side, with nobody knowing how to fix them. I can give you my credentials on your server too if that would help you figure out the problem.
1+ more replies (not shown)
@julian@activitypub.space in case this helps narrow it down, I followed 2 more accounts, and now my "following" page shows 6 accounts (from 4 before), but the menu on the left still says 7, it wasn't affected.
1+ more replies (not shown)
