Fedizen has been an experimental concept floating around in my head for a number of years now. It has the following goals:
- Promote businesses, services, organizations, and events within the Fediverse.
- Offer listings for jobs, trades, and help wanted.
- Provide a directory of interesting and fun communities to join
- Highlight / aggregate content and media from the Fediverse itself.
Projects worth studying
This section merely provides areas of study before we commit any code. It's not so much a suggestion to fork any particular project, so much as it is a study to examine what is currently possible within the Fediverse.
- User Review system: NeoDB does a phenomenal job of building catalogues from existing services, offering an easy way to pull in things for people to review. In fact, it's possible to pull in your entire GoodReads account and import everything you've read or recommended. We don't necessarily need the external data from, say, Amazon, but the idea of letting an instance construct a dataset for other systems to pull in is actually kind of interesting.
- Items for Sale: Although somewhat rudimentary, Flohmarkt makes it possible to do eBay/Craigslist-style item listings. There's not a whole lot of functionality here, but it's extremely interesting to see what might be possible
- Events: We actually have a few different projects worth looking at, which are compatible with one another: Mobilizon and Gancio ostensibly both work with one another, and may be worthy examples of platforms to test against.
- Media: Basically PeerTube for videos, Bandwagon and Funkwhale for audio. It would be interesting to become an authorized integration partner with Bandwagon.
- Geolocation: Largely unexplored area. I know someone wrote about playing with geodata and ActivityPub in the past, but can't currently find it. It would be hugely valuable to plug
Locationvalues into Events, though. - Business/Service Directory: The biggest things that come to mind probably stem from the Friendica family tree of platforms. However, we could probably develop something smaller and simpler, in the sense that we're really just showcasing a collection of businesses and services that have agreed to appear on Fedizen.net.
- Community Discovery: This one's tougher. Maybe keep a list of interesting communities across Lemmy / PieFed / MBin / NodeBB? I don't think we necessarily want to be a Group provider ourselves, but recommending groups and directing people to join communities seems okay.
- News Aggregation: There's currently not much to compare this to. Maybe Mastodon's News section? Regardless, the focus probably should be smaller, and more specific to Fediverse publications and blogs.
- Relay Technology: Fediverse Relays are notoriously under-documented, but BuzzRelay is at least a more contemporary project in active use.
What's the goal of Fedizen?
Basically, Fedizen is an attempt to build a type of Fediverse Discovery Provider. The goal is to combine these five concepts:
- A search engine for content and communities (opt-in, of course)
- A directory of Fediverse-grown businesses and services, with user reviews
- A news aggregator that includes guides and resources for Fedizens.
- A relay provider that passes along public statuses, updates, and media to the wider network.
- Additional support infrastructure for Fediverse projects.
Fedizen has been an experimental concept floating around in my head for a number of years now. It has the following goals:
* Promote businesses, services, organizations, and events within the Fediverse.
* Offer listings for jobs, trades, and help wanted.
* Provide a directory of interesting and fun communities to join
* Highlight / aggregate content and media from the Fediverse itself.
### Projects worth studying
This section merely provides areas of study before we commit any code. It's not so much a suggestion to fork any particular project, so much as it is a study to examine what is currently possible within the Fediverse.
* **User Review system:** [NeoDB](https://neodb.net/) does a phenomenal job of building catalogues from existing services, offering an easy way to pull in things for people to review. In fact, it's possible to pull in your entire GoodReads account and import everything you've read or recommended. We don't necessarily need the external data from, say, Amazon, but the idea of letting an instance construct a dataset for other systems to pull in is actually kind of interesting.
* **Items for Sale:** Although somewhat rudimentary, [Flohmarkt](https://codeberg.org/flohmarkt/flohmarkt) makes it possible to do eBay/Craigslist-style item listings. There's not a whole lot of functionality here, but it's extremely interesting to see what might be possible
* **Events:** We actually have a few different projects worth looking at, which are compatible with one another: [Mobilizon](https://joinmobilizon.org/en/) and [Gancio](https://gancio.org/) ostensibly both work with one another, and may be worthy examples of platforms to test against.
* **Media:** Basically [PeerTube](https://joinpeertube.org/) for videos, [Bandwagon](https://bandwagon.fm/) and [Funkwhale](https://funkwhale.audio) for audio. It would be interesting to become an authorized integration partner with Bandwagon.
* **Geolocation:** Largely unexplored area. I know someone wrote about playing with geodata and ActivityPub in the past, but can't currently find it. It would be hugely valuable to plug `Location` values into Events, though.
* **Business/Service Directory:** The biggest things that come to mind probably stem from the [Friendica](https://friendi.ca/) family tree of platforms. However, we could probably develop something smaller and simpler, in the sense that we're really just showcasing a collection of businesses and services that have agreed to appear on Fedizen.net.
* **Community Discovery:** This one's tougher. Maybe keep a list of interesting communities across Lemmy / PieFed / MBin / NodeBB? I don't think we necessarily want to be a Group provider ourselves, but recommending groups and directing people to join communities seems okay.
* **News Aggregation:** There's currently not much to compare this to. Maybe Mastodon's News section? Regardless, the focus probably should be smaller, and more specific to Fediverse publications and blogs.
* **Relay Technology:** Fediverse Relays are notoriously under-documented, but [BuzzRelay](https://github.com/astro/buzzrelay) is at least a more contemporary project in active use.
### What's the goal of Fedizen?
Basically, Fedizen is an attempt to build a type of [Fediverse Discovery Provider](https://www.fediscovery.org/). The goal is to combine these five concepts:
* A search engine for content and communities (opt-in, of course)
* A directory of Fediverse-grown businesses and services, with user reviews
* A news aggregator that includes guides and resources for Fedizens.
* A relay provider that passes along public statuses, updates, and media to the wider network.
* Additional support infrastructure for Fediverse projects.