Does anyone have any experience with both #NodeBB 's and #Discourse 's #ActivityPub / #Fediverse integrations?

Does anyone have any experience with both #NodeBB 's and #Discourse 's #ActivityPub / #Fediverse integrations? I am wondering what each can and cannot do. I am familiar with NodeBB's federation but not with Discourse's one. It would be great if there was a comparison chart, but I haven't managed to find anything like that. Thanks!

@panos@calckey.world how detailed do you want me to get

@julian@activitypub.space haha, just the main differences! I have gathered that in Discourse you can't follow fedi users, and you can't be followed as a Discourse user from fedi, which is a huge difference in favor of NodeBB (although, as you know, I'm facing serious issues with this feature, which makes me a little reluctant to suggest NodeBB for its fedi integration - https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/issues/13840 ). Hopefully this will be solved at some point, so what are the rest of the big differences?

@panos discourse's federation is reallllllly lacking and has a ton of issues. I wouldn't recommend it at the moment unless you are already running an instance and you want to try it out

@panos@calckey.world can you test group federation again? Much has changed since you opened that issue.

@julian@activitypub.space in the two groups I follow, the last post seems to be 9 and 10 days ago, whereas both have had new posts daily since then. I unfollowed and refollowed them, to see if it changes anything. BTW I think I found a bug in the process: "View original" for this group https://community.nodebb.org/category/showerthoughts@lemmy.world seems to point back to the same (nodebb) page.
But it's not just with groups, I'm having serious issues with accounts too. My profile: https://community.nodebb.org/user/panos shows I have no followers, but if you click it it shows 3. "Following" says 7 but shows 4. My main account (which I follow) through NodeBB shows 0 posts, while I'm posting daily more or less. It also shows that this user joined on 25 Nov 2025, but was last online on 8 Sept 2025
I followed my NodeBB account from Mastodon, it went through as expected. I try to follow it from Firefish and Sharkey, they show "pending" and don't go through (and ok, Firefish is abandoned, but Sharkey is a popular platform - and I suspect the same probably happens with the upstream Misskey).
All of those render my account completely unusable for federation. And it's not that I might have screwed something up with the setup of NodeBB, this is on your official community, that you are maintaining. I understand that I might be the exception and other users probably have a flawless experience, but it's hard to take the risk that some users may face similar problems. I really think it's important to figure out what causes these issues and to iron them out.

@julian@activitypub.space oh and also World has recently decided to show all incoming posts, similar to the Global/All servers timelines in other platforms, instead of posts from the accounts I follow. I can't seem to find a way to get a feed of accounts I follow.

@julian@activitypub.space in case this helps narrow it down, I followed 2 more accounts, and now my "following" page shows 6 accounts (from 4 before), but the menu on the left still says 7, it wasn't affected.

@julian@activitypub.space right, after more testing, I'm pretty sure that the accounts that appear in the followers/following pages (with the profile pictures) are correct, the problem there is with the number on the left menu.

@panos@calckey.world yeah that number is just a counter, it's likely just out of sync with the... real number of followers <img class="not-responsive emoji" src="https://activitypub.space/assets/plugins/nodebb-plugin-emoji/emoji/android/1f604.png?v=68d304aca6d" title="" />

So... less of a priority.

@julian@activitypub.space yeah, this was the least important one, but I think that the problems with following/posts not being fetched/follows not going through are pretty important, these are essential parts of federation.

@panos@calckey.world if Sharkey users can't follow NodeBB users you'll have to take it up with the Sharkey devs. NodeBB sends back an Accept to a follow, as it does to Mastodon servers.

@julian@activitypub.space thanks, I informed them!
This still leaves serious issues that are on NodeBB's end though. This is my "World" page rn - posts from accounts and communities I follow aren't fetched (I'll report back on the communities after the refollow), and I'm getting random posts in my feed instead:

@julian@activitypub.space btw someone in the Sharkey devs' channel noticed something interesting: Through https://activitypub.academy/ (which is a testing mastodon instance with an activity log), when I follow a Firefish user, it shows Firefish sending back an Accept. Same with Mastodon. But when I followed a NodeBB user, while the follow went through, it doesn't show an Accept being received from NodeBB. Tested this myself as well.

@julian@activitypub.space I can also report back about remote communities after I unfollowed and refollowed them, there was a new post in the Lemmy community I follow 5 hours ago but again it wasn't fetched by NodeBB. Still shows the last post to be from 10 days ago.

@julian @panos @general @liaizon I am also affected by this: https://activitypub.software/TransFem-org/Sharkey/-/issues/1212

They changed something in one of recent releases and now can't process Accept activities.

@silverpill @julian @general @panos @liaizon Sharkey can follow NodeBB users, I tried to follow julian using a friend's instance and it immediately returned a follow request accepted.

Sharkey version: 2025.4.5

@caohuak@moon.lonewolf.zone @liaizon@social.wake.st @silverpill@mitra.social @julian@activitypub.space @general@activitypub.space huh, here it still doesn't want to:

@panos @liaizon @silverpill @julian @general Perhaps you need to contact the calckey.world administrator to find out what's going on? I've tested this from another instance and it works fine.

@caohuak@moon.lonewolf.zone will do, thanks! @general@activitypub.space @liaizon@social.wake.st @silverpill@mitra.social @julian@activitypub.space