Inconsistency on the side effect of receiving a Follow activity

[marnanel]

Section 5.3 says:

Every actor SHOULD have a followers collection. This is a list of everyone who has sent a Follow activity for the actor, added as a side effect.

But section 7.5 disagrees: the side effect is to send an Accept or a Reject activity. The actor is only added to the followers collection if the reply is Accept.

The side effect of receiving [the Follow activity] in an inbox is that the server SHOULD generate either an Accept or Reject activity with the Follow as the object and deliver it to the actor of the Follow. [...] In the case of receiving an Accept referencing this Follow as the object, the server SHOULD add the actor to the object actor's Followers Collection.

Also, I think "receiving" in the last sentence should be "sending".

[trwnh]

In the case of receiving an Accept referencing this Follow as the object, the server SHOULD add the actor to the object actor's Followers Collection.

that last sentence seems backwards. it should likely indeed be "sending", but it should probably also say "add the [object actor] to the [actor's] Followers Collection". in other words, Follow.actor is added to Accept.actor.followers -- the person following you is added to your followers collection, not the other way around.

[evanp]

I agree on both points. We need to add two errata; one for the misleading and inaccurate description of followers, and the other for the inaccurate processing of Accept activities.

[evanp]

OK, there are 3 things to do here:

1. Change the erroneous explanation of followers.
2. Remove the sentence about receiving an Accept activity from the section on the Follow activity.
3. Add sections on Accept and Reject to section 6 on the ActivityPub API. The sentence that was removed may make sense there.

I am going to add errata for the first two. I think the third is important enough that we should address it in the next version of the spec, but not enough of an error to include in Errata. However, it would probably be helpful to cover in the Primer.

[evanp]

I've added an erratum for section 5.3 here: https://www.w3.org/wiki/ActivityPub_errata/Proposed

Section 5.3 should begin, Every actor SHOULD have a followers collection. This is where one would find a list of all the actors that are following the actor.

[evanp]

I've added an erratum for section 7.5 "Follow Activity" here: https://www.w3.org/wiki/ActivityPub_errata/Proposed

In section 7.5 "Follow Activity", the second paragraph is incorrect, and should be removed.

[evanp]

The third issue is called out specifically in #489 , so I think we remove the Needs Primer Page from this issue and leave it on that one.