I gave my initial thoughts here but I thought it worth boiling down to a few features I (possibly selfishly) would like to see:
Lemmy login (and other Threadiverse devices like Mbin/Kbin and perhaps PieFed but the lack of an API may be an issue) - you can already use your login from a number of other Fediverse services.
Import IMDb lists - you can import Letterboxd ones.
As both features are already running in NeoDB (just for other websites) it should lower the bar for these changes, compared with starting from scratch.
So I spoke to the developer and of a Lemmy login, they said
great question. my thought is no but also yes.
The current login via (Mastodon|Bluesky|Threads) is for users who want to add their review to their existing microblogging feed, but Lemmy is not primarily for microblogging.
However, I do think it's valid use case to post a book review to a forum and interact with members of that forum. This does not require login via Lemmy, but instead can be achieved by adding Group feature to NeoDB and make its federation compatible with Lemmy.
When given a further nudge, they responded
thanks, I'll think about it. neither is trivial efforts, will probably take a while.
Web fiction is an interesting topic by itself, there are currently some debate among NeoDB.social users about if/how that should be managed in the catalog.
They have a point about the microblogging feed thing ... but I'd question how essential that is as a feature. I imagine many might prefer to leave things on the neoDB instance?? (Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if this touches on the general topic of how federation isn't everything in decentralised social media)
So logging in with an account then is about convenience (which is arguably something decentralisation can be more about!).
What's more, from what I can tell, the neoDB account is linked to but still separate from the original fediverse account, meaning that someone can follow the neoDB account specifically for neoDB content ... which is arguably a nicer way of doing things and could be available for all lemmy users.
Adding the group feature is interesting too!
My understanding is that bookwyrm kinda do that already ???
So I'd guess each item (book, film etc) would be a group and all reviews posts and all commentary ordinary comments??
Or ... cross posting from neoDB, instead of being just to mastodon etc, could be to a specified group/community, which seems like an easier lift for neoDB, as then it wouldn't need to implement a full group feature, but instead federate out a group-based post and be prepared to receive the "replies" to that post as comments much the same way it already does but compatible with the group-based threadiverse platforms like lemmy.
So I actually haven't signed into one with my masto account (yet) ... I saw the permissions it was taking and got a little concerned that it was taking write permissions over my account, specifically posts and media ... not knowing enough about it I noped out until I could clarify what's going on.
Do you know what that's about? Naively it seems unnecessary ... but is the idea that I can post on a neoDB instance and have that post appear as though it's from my mastodon account?
I wondered what that did. I wouldn't use it - just follow my neodb account if you want to see that stuff. Same as Bookwyrm - if you want to see what I'm reading, follow that account.
Actually some link between Bookwyrm and NeoDB would be good. I'd rather keep my books on Bookwyrm, but if it could be synced to NeoDB that would be cool.