Unclear descriptions of 'to', 'bto', 'cc' and 'bcc'

[aschrijver]

Please Indicate One:

• [x] Editorial
• [ ] Question
• [ ] Feedback
• [ ] Blocking Issue
• [ ] Non-Blocking Issue

Please Describe the Issue in https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary:

• Object#to, Object#bto, Object#cc, Object#bcc:

  • There is inconsistency in the description of these properties that can lead to confusion
  • The to, bto, cc properties are described as "Identifies an entity considered to be part of the [public|private] [primary|secondary] audience of an Object" but the example shows them to be a JSON array
  • The bcc property is described as "Identifies one or more Objects that are part of the private secondary audience of this Object." which seems accurate
  • except that is should mention 'entities' as both Object and Link are allowed

I assume that all of these properties can hold multiple entities of type Object and Link, and all these properties should have a description similar to bcc (with slight correction).

[nightpool]

every non-functional JSON-LD property can either be a single entity or an array, so there's no problem there. writing {"to": ["a", "b"]} is just a representation for writing {"to": "a", "to": "b"} in a json-compatible way.

[aschrijver]

Thank you! I was raising this issue primarily to state that this could be clearer in the textual descriptions, as editorial feedback :)

[nightpool]

Sounds good, someone should propose the desired changes to the ERRATA document.

(@evanp can you accept PRs from any Community Group member or how does that work?)

[gobengo]

@evanp do you know the answer to that question (or chairs @aaronpk @cwebber )?

[aschrijver]

Tangential: There is also the audience property, for which the meaning only became clear to me after finding the GH issue, where it was first discussed (to help someone on SO). The example in GH was clearer to me than the one in the spec (see SO for details: https://stackoverflow.com/a/51951319/8295283 )

[evanp]

I added errata to change the Notes for each of these properties to 1) mention the functionality (one or more) and 2) specify entities instead of Objects. There's a PR here:

https://github.com/w3c/activitystreams/pull/555

As @bobwyman mentioned in the issue triage, we don't have a rigourous definition for "entity", but since this is used in multiple places, I suggested we log that as an issue, and resolve separately.

[aschrijver]

Thank you for adding this to errata. I am fine with this issue being closed.