nips/172.md

NIP-172

Moderated Communities (Reddit Style)

draft optional author:vitorpamplona

The goal of this NIP is to create moderator-approved public communities around a topic. It defines the replaceable event 34550 to define the community and the current list of moderators/administrators. Users that want to post into the community, simply tag any Nostr event with an a tag. Moderators issue an approval event 34551 that links the community with the new post.

Community definition

Kind 34550 should include any field that helps define the community and the set of moderators.

{
  "id": "<32-bytes lowercase hex-encoded SHA-256 of the the serialized event data>",
  "pubkey": "<32-bytes lowercase hex-encoded public key of the event creator>",
  "created_at": "<Unix timestamp in seconds>",
  "kind": 34550,
  "tags": [
    ["d", "<community_name>"],
    ["description", "<community_description>"],
    ["image",  "<community_image>", "WidthxHeight"],
	
    //.. other tags relevant to defining the community

    // moderators
    ["p", "<32-bytes hex of a pubkey>", "<optional recommended relay URL>", "moderator"],
    ["p", "<32-bytes hex of a pubkey>", "<optional recommended relay URL>", "moderator"],
    ["p", "<32-bytes hex of a pubkey>", "<optional recommended relay URL>", "moderator"],
	
	// relays used by the community 
    ["relay", "<relay hosting author kind 0>", "author"],
    ["relay", "<relay where to post requests to and fetch approvals from>"], 
    ["relay", "<relay where to post requests to and fetch approvals from>"]
  ]
}

New Post Request

Any Nostr event can be a post request. Clients should simply add the community's a tag to be presented for the moderator's approval.

{
  "id": "<32-bytes lowercase hex-encoded SHA-256 of the the serialized event data>",
  "pubkey": "<32-bytes lowercase hex-encoded public key of the event creator>",
  "created_at": "<Unix timestamp in seconds>",
  "kind": "1",
  "tags": [
    ["a", "34550:<community event author pubkey>:<d-identifier of the community>", "<optional relay url>"],
  ], 
  "content": "<my content>"
}

Community management clients can filter all mentions of the kind-34550 event and request moderators to approve each submission. The same moderator can remove his/her approval of the post at any time.

Post Approval by moderators

The post-approval event includes a stringified new post request event inside the .content of the approval (NIP-18-style).

{
  "id": "<32-bytes lowercase hex-encoded SHA-256 of the the serialized event data>",
  "pubkey": "<32-bytes lowercase hex-encoded public key of the event creator>",
  "created_at": "<Unix timestamp in seconds>",
  "kind": "34551",
  "tags": [
    ["a", "34550:<community event author pubkey>:<d-identifier of the community>", "<optional relay url>"],
    ["e", "<Post Request ID>", "<optional relay url>"],
    ["p", "<Post Request Author ID>", "<optional relay url>"],
    ["k", "<New Post Request kind>"],
  ], 
  "content": "{ <New Post Request JSON> }"
}

It's recommended that multiple moderators approve posts to avoid unapproving them when a given moderator is removed from the owner's list. In case the full list of moderators must be rotated, the new moderator set must sign post-approvals for posts in the past or the community will restart.

Displaying

Community clients can display posts that have been approved by at least 1 moderator or by the community owner.

The following filter displays the approved posts.

{
  "authors": ["<author>", "moderator1", "moderator2", "moderator3", ...],
  "kinds": 34551,
  "#a": ["34550:<community event author pubkey>:<d-identifier of the community>"],
}