wiki.trwnh.com/content/tech/spec/activitypub/shortcomings/Note-distinction.md

981 B

see [Note vs Article]({{<relref "note-vs-article.md" >}}) for more. but basically:

in summary:

Note: Represents a short written work typically less than a single paragraph in length.

Article: represents any kind of multi-paragraph written work.

but this is contradicted by as2/ap examples.

the messy general consensus post-spec seems to be about "intention", but this is never defined. it is unclear what a Note is intended to be, and what an Article is intended to be, beyond very loosely and very vaguely tying such notions to app-specific abstractions or behavior. for example, Mastodon will show a Note more or less in full, but convert an Article to a title and url.

it would have been better to define it similarly to HTML <article> perhaps? an independent unit of writing? one that is published and therefore might reasonably be syndicated?

and maybe Note should have been forced plaintext. idk. at the very least the distinction should be better explained.