suggestion: new "webmentions server" conformance class

[tantek]

Beyond just receivers and senders, we have seen the emergence of multiple services that can receive Webmentions on your behalf (with some amount of processing) and either provide them via an API and/or an embed you can place on your website, such as:

• webmention.io
• webmention.herokuapp.com

I think these are the sign of a new conformance class: "webmentions server" that's worthy of explicitly recognizing and documenting.

https://www.w3.org/TR/webmention/#conformance-classes

Perhaps this can be added as a non-normative addition to the errata?

https://github.com/w3c/webmention/tree/master/errata

cc: @voxpelli

[tantek]

In addition, I'm wondering what conformance class Bridgy falls into (both Bridgy Backfeed and Bridgy Publish), as it feels more than just "receiver" and "sender". cc: @snarfed

[snarfed]

@tantek they're definitely another implementation class, but are they a different conformance class? afaik the spec doesn't specify any behavior outside of either receiving or sending, right?

re bridgy, it's basically a service-level polyfill for webmention support for silos. maybe call it a proxy? i don't feel strongly. (again though, maybe not a separate conformance class per se...?)

[tantek]

@snarfed not sure what you mean by "implementation class" as the spec doesn't define anything like that. It defines requirements for sending or receiving, but for something to be a "Sender" or a "Receiver" - that's a conformance class. I.e. see where it says "Listed below are known types of Webmention implementations." - I'm basically saying a "webmentions server" is another type of implementation.

[snarfed]

@tantek sorry, implementation class isn't meaningful, just a term i made up.

sounds like we're on the same page, though. webmentions server and proxy/polyfill definitely sound like more type(s) of implementations, but in terms of conformance, they probably just fall into both of the existing conformance classes. if conformance classes are exclusive, ie you can't be in more than one, then sure, we'd need another.