Redirect or at a placeholder at /register

[jg10-mastodon-social]

Seen on Mastodon:
https://fosstodon.org/@pawamoy/114173342547563143

https://liqid.chat links to https://solidcommunity.net/register

Just from the point of view of https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI it would be good not to break that link

[thhck]

Thanks for sharing that..
Yeah not great onboarding looking at this comment x[

I don't think redirecting this link to the new registation endpoint would solve the issue, because I think the spec has changed since.

With the current state of Solid and the small userbase, we should better put our effort moving forward rather than assuring backward compatibility.

An in-between solution could be to have a Solid catalogue ( like @jeff-zucker's wip ) that shows up-to-date app. And then, we could create special page like:

Oups ! it's seems you are using an outdated solid app, please consult the catalog to check up-to-date app !

WDYT ?

[jg10-mastodon-social]

That's an interesting alternative. I suppose the general use case it's tackling is detection of app compatibility.
Having a solution in Pivot and on solidcommunity.net could address the current new user bounce, which might be enough given that users on other/their own servers are likely to be more tolerant.

I would still prefer that register redirect somewhere rather than give a 401, as the message then is that the Solid ecosystem is still comfortable making breaking changes without even notifying new users that this is the case.

Perhaps as a simpler alternative, can we put a page at /register that says something like: oops! This endpoint was used in a previous version of the spec. The app that sent you here is probably outdated. If you'd like to register a new account, please go to ...

Edit: Just realised I think I suggested the same thing you already had. For some reason I thought you were proposing to use the catalogue to detect whether or not an app was up to date.

[bourgeoa]

Well if I can make some history:

there was about the last 2 years when apps where asked to migrate there login method to OIDC, when OIDC was finally implemented in NSS to follow specification.
In the meantime both login methods where working on NSS.
Some did and some not.

The recent data migration to CSS closed that possibility for https://solidcommunity.net.
The data are not lost and the SolidOS chat should work on them.

[jg10-mastodon-social]

In the meantime both login methods where working on NSS.

I think solidcommunity.net and SolidOS have weathered the changes outstandingly so far, hence why it seems feasible to offer new users this little bit of support yet again.

[thhck]

I'm thinking it might not be that easy to add those redirect.

This could conflict with pod name, or containers name. Maybe not worth the effort then. Better ask the app developer if they can take down their app or change the list of recommended solid server ( if their is still backyard compatible solid servers )