NLNet Grant 2026: MakingHistory

First Tech Stage: Months 1-6

Ready using existing tech

Will require configuration, tweaking and #UX.

• Federation via ActivityPub inbox/outbox. Interoperability with Mastodon, PeerTube, Lemmy, and others.
• Search searchable dataset for content on the local site.
• Search: Actor Remote actors (users and peer servers) can follow individual search queries via ActivityPub. The search engine publishes an ActivityPub actor for every search query, which broadcasts a live news feed to other ActivityPub actors.

Small Effort

• Search: Federation search services subscribe to content from the remote sites and aggregate content into one result set. (Ben)
• Search: Multiple Sources - Update search engine to handle multiple sources. (Ben)
• Search: Delete Sources - Remove content from search when its source is removed. Include logic to KEEP "multi-sourced" content if one or more valid sources remain. (Ben)
• Search: Respect 'IsIndexable' Flag - Mastodon has added an IsIndexable property that lets individuals choose if their content is indexable by search engines or not. Confirm that Emissary honors this request, and update if not already implemented. (Ben)
• Remote Users - Update Emissary permissions to allow remote users to be granted "edit" permissions on original articles. (Ben)

Medium Effort

• 3-Column Layout - Create a new template for Emissary that uses OMN's traditional desktop/mobile layout. (Michael)
• Custom Article Templates - Create a news article template, possibly based on Qwertylicious articles. Remove "paid" features. (Michael)
• Mobile UX - Update the desktop layout to work on mobile devices. (Michael)
• Content Replication: Design - Design and publish an Fediverse Enhancement Proposal: FEP-de2b Content Replication and Succession Planning (Michael, Ben)
• Content Filtering: Coop Integration - Integration with Coop content filtering server (Ben, Gov?) - we need to think about is this native or not - at a minumen it has to be able to be turned off.
• Content Filtering: Initial Rule Sets - Set up initial boolean logic to represent trust relationships between servers. (Hamish)
• Search Engine Flows - When a server discovers content on a remote site, allow its search engine to relay this content to other "following" search engines. Stage 1: Per-source setting to activate/deactivate this ability on a source-by-source basis. (Ben)

Second Stage: Months 7-12 [DRAFT]

• Comments - Implement article comments based on ActivityPub (Michael)
• "Remote Editing" - UX workflows to allow visitors to remote sites to edit a wiki article by signing in to the primary host. (Michael)
• Content Replication: Build - Build to the design from first 6 months (Ben, Michael)
• Content Filtering: Ongoing Work - Update content filtering configuration based on lessons from real-world use (Hamish)
• Search Engine Flows - Add a per-source setting to each peered search server that would allow a server to rebroadcast remote content to search followers on its own search index. This would only happen after remote content has been filtered/approved by the trust process. (Ben)

Additional

Further grant needed to continue with the following.

• Federated Wiki, with synchronization of distributed edits

Include or not???

Q. Are we questioning whether to include in the above additional list, or whether we seek grant for these specific items?
Q. Can we get some more detail on them?

• Temporal rollback filters
• Security auditing
• Accessibility compliance