Note vs Article

Discussion: https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/resolving-the-note-vs-article-distinction/258

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

failed ideas for distinction

a "paragraph"

perhaps a note could have no line breaks or only a single <p> tag, while an article does? well there's an example that directly contradicts this! ActivityPub example 4 uses two <p> tags inside a Note's content

titles

some say a Note has no title but an Article does -- this is not strictly true in all cases, a Note can have a name (and AS2-Vocab example 43 does so)

formatting

some say a Note has no formatting but an Article does -- this is not true at all, as Note can be HTML and is in fact assumed to be HTML by default (per AS2-Vocab definition of mediaType)

length

perhaps a Note has some character limit and an Article doesn't -- but what is the limit? completely arbitrary. not worth making this distinction

what's left for distinction?

syndication

an Article is expected to be syndicated (think HTML <article>) since it is a self-contained piece of content. whereas a Note might not be

however this may imply that microblog posts should be sent out as Article? requires further thought

formality

an Article is "published" in a formal context whereas a Note is presented in an informal context

in other words a Note may be ephemeral while an Article is longer-lived

the practical difference

a Note will be displayed inline in Mastodon, but an Article will be converted to name/summary + url/id

further recommendations for microblog compatibility:

a Note SHOULD still work with a plaintext fallback, as most html will be stripped
a Note SHOULD NOT have a name/title, as this will be ignored

if you don't care about Mastodon or similar microblogging impls then do whatever

indieweb perspective

indieweb seems to take this view https://indieweb.org/Semantics_Of_Article-Note_Distinction

post name/title [though discounted above]

non-trivial structure [akin to formality -- headings?]

plain text vs markup [basically the p-content vs e-content argument]

takeaway thoughts

i would tend to assume everything is an article by default, with certain characteristics making it tend toward being a note instead

for metadata:

no name?

for content:

no headings?
no formatting?

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