Federating friendly spaces

Two years ago Roomy's predecessor Commune (based on Matrix) outlined the merits of federation between chatrooms.

In the glory days of web 1.0, social websites would prominently link out to their digital neighbors via lists known as webrings. Fellow communities they could vouch for.

It was a time of greater connectivity between communal web spaces, each one serving as a magical doorway into an expansive hinterland of digital villages.

Helped on by the atmosphere we can make a better, even friendlier Web of the People and bring back the cozy vibes of the old web neighborhoods.

Federation v1 in Roomy

Thanks to the development work of @meri.garden a space in Roomy can now opt to have a selection of its channels appear inside other spaces, and participants of that other space can interact with those channels like normal. They're like portals.

On the left is the Roomy meta-space for product feedback, including channels for #bugs and #features. On the right is the Muni Town space where the product design of Roomy happens.

To make it easier for us to keep up with Roomy product feedback via the Muni "headquarters" we've federated the two feedback channels into the Muni space.

The Roomy (Meta) Space and Muni Town are now sharing the #bugs and #features channels; they can be posted to from either space, interchangeably.

Enable federation for your space

Many refinements remain to properly convey what's going on on both ends of a federated channel, as well as the setup flow, but federation is fully functional and has been enabled for all spaces.

To federate your (administrated) space with another simply

1. go to your space settings
2. go to Federation
3. select a space you're already a member of and sent it a request.

Incoming requests from friendly spaces (people who are members of your space) will appear on this page as well.

First case: atproto.science

Courtesy of Cosmik💟

We've been looking for a good reason to make federation a top priority and we found it in our partnership with the @atproto.science project as one of Roomy's pilot communities.

Thanks to a $3200 grant from the awesome folks at @cosmik.network we've been working on a handful of features*¹ that are of strategic importance to the atproto science community, starting with federation.

Right now visitors of roomy.space/atproto.science*² will only see a federated #roomy-support channel, but the possibilities go way beyond that initial test. ATProto Science is a meta-community, aggregating all kinds of science-adjacent communities into one directory.

Each of these projects might eventually have their own Roomy space. Now imagine an Ecosystem category in the @atproto.science space with a curation of federated channels from across that entire ecosystem. That makes ATProto Science a more effective funnel for other science communities on atproto.

Likewise, entrants to any one of those partner projects would notice that some of the channels they're on are federated out to some place called ATProto Science, and they might go check it out to explore other spaces in the science microsphere.

Go try it now and let us know how it goes!

Q&A

Can Roomy federate with other atproto comms apps?

We do not yet federate with the likes of Colibri, but we are coordinating closely with @lou.gg to build towards that end, starting by converging on the same foundational lexicons.

Is this federation on-protocol?

Only marginally for now, but as lower level primitives like atmospheric groups and the arbiter policy engine stabilize we will transition to them for greater interop.