Special thanks to @jaz for opening up so many issues in the new FediDB repo!

[dansup@mastodon.social]

@liaizon @jaz @nodebb not right how? We just go by the nodeinfo numbers

[jaz@mastodon.iftas.org]

@dansup great stuff, thanks!

[liaizon@social.wake.st]

@dansup @jaz @nodebb this server lists 2.2 million users https://community.sketchucation.com but there's no way that is possible so either they are faking numbers or they have a bug in their data

[julian@community.nodebb.org]

@[email protected] @[email protected] it's possible they have a huge number of inactive accounts if registration is open. That community specifically has been around for quite awhile.

What I want to know is how most of the entries on there are found?! The majority of them don't have federation turned on...

[liaizon@social.wake.st]

@julian @dansup but 2.2 million?!

[jaz@mastodon.iftas.org]

@julian @liaizon @dansup I'm uncertain how NodBB works, is it possible that they turned it on, which generated a nodeinfo, then turned it off but the crawler can still see the nodeinfo data? Absolutely just guessing, I have no idea how to even confirm if they are federating.

[liaizon@social.wake.st]

@jaz @julian @dansup we are in a thread with its maintainer so I don't think any of this can be that much of a mystery

[dansup@mastodon.social]

@liaizon @jaz @julian we discover servers by crawling pixelfed peers api, so they federated at some point. We do remove servers without a reachable node info or one that blocks crawlers

[julian@community.nodebb.org]

@[email protected] interesting.

@[email protected] fwiw NodeBB v4 always generates a nodeinfo because that's not AP specific.

I was worried (not overly so, mostly just amused at this point) that FediDB was noting servers that I'm pretty sure have never federated, but I could definitely be wrong about that.

cc @[email protected]

[jaz@mastodon.iftas.org]

@julian @dansup @liaizon aha! Dan, you'll need to identify a method to determine if the forum is in fact federating, anyone got any bright ideas?

[dansup@mastodon.social]

@jaz @julian @liaizon Yes, we just need to check the nodeinfo protocols, though I assumed they all supported ActivityPub as this is what nodeinfo was created for.

I've never seen a nodeinfo with an empty protocols array, that kind of defeats the purpose IMO.

I will fix this though.

[julian@community.nodebb.org]

@[email protected] no, NodeBB v4 always reports activitypub in protocols, even if disabled. I can update that so it's dependent on the global switch, but it's still possible to have AP enabled but not have any categories federating.

I'm just wondering whether FediDB found the forums because content got federated, or whether there was some proactive nodeinfo crawling, that's all.

cc @[email protected]