Question regarding #federation -

How does one improve the "reach" of a single user instance? The basic issue is when clicking on a toot from my other persona I regularly do not see many other replies unless I go to the original.

Here on #IndieWeb that's less of a problem. Obviously if I were more interesting and provoked greater engagement this would probably improve on its own. But let's just make the assumption that I'm going to continue to post garbage...

#MastoAdmin #MastodonQuestion

C# will still be a language for me, but getting #OpenCAD off the ground right now is a little more important than being able to send #IndieWeb #Webmentions from #dotnet.

Sighs at getting the 422 error from the Mastodon server when my RSS feed pushed to Mastodon via IFTTT. Brings back memories of it taking hours to get crossposting up and running.

No-one ever said #indieweb was gonna be easy.




https://www.thisdaysportion.com/notes/no-one-ever-said-indieweb-was-gonna-be-easy

Almost done getting a #dataviz #gephi academic researcher to join the open web with his own micro.blog as a starter!

Which reminds me that my blog has been down for lazy/lack of time reasons for more than a year and it's high time I fix it and give it some love and regularity! #indieweb

It's a good practice when developing user apps solo to finish and walk away fro a week or two, then come back and run it. You'll feel more like a user and less like the developer. Hopefully looking more critically at what the experience is like. Just did that for my new IG to blog export tool and found a list of things needing improvement. #indieweb #dev

Nineteen years ago last Saturday, @KevinMarks.com & I introduced¹ #microformats @OReillyMedia ETech 2004, building on “semantic (x)html”.

We’ve come a long way since, from methodologies to #microformats2, from publishing to peer-to-peer #IndieWeb use-cases.

We named #microformats only after we had established a pattern of real world examples; even our talk proposal was named RealWorldSemantics², and provided examples in that broader theme.

This exemplified important implicit values in ordering our efforts:
1. get real world things working first, not just theory
2. name them after a pattern emerges, not just solo efforts
3. grow the pattern with proposals, prototypes, iteration, evolution

The examples at that point in time:
* XFN — using rel-values for blogroll semantics, and the technology that defined rel=me in v1.1³, now the standard for decentralized social media verification on Mastodon, GitHub, elsewhere, and the basis of RelMeAuth
* XMDP — XHTML MetaData Profiles, notably using an HTML class with a particular value 'profile' to indicate presence of a specific semantic structure
* XOXO — XHTML Outlines, formalizing existing usage of (X)HTML elements for outlines, also using an HTML class with a particular value 'xoxo' to express a semantic

Growing the pattern:
* rel=license — solved page licensing better than before, since widespread adopted
* VoteLinks — new rel values, prototyped, only one consuming implementation (since defunct)

And further brainstorming:
* recommendations — initial rel="recommendation" idea eventually evolved to hReview, and today’s h-review
* syndication — helped motivate HTML5 <time> element, eventually led to hAtom, and today’s h-entry
* playlists — led to various ideas, proposals, & demos, still not really solved today


The mid-2000s were a time of eager experimentation, when we were learning that very small bits of markup (yes, hence the name) could be used to build some very useful capabilities on top of the open web platform.

A few observations with the benefit of years of experience since we proposed “microformats”:


One: Many microformats succeeded because we solved an existing problem, with existing *complex* solutions, by providing a drastically *simpler* solution.

XFN instead of FOAF. rel=license instead of Creative Commons RDF in HTML comments.

By doing so, we skipped the often harder problem of defining & refining a problem worth solving, a use-case, or user scenario.


Two: A few microformats succeeded because they solved existing problems, re-using *existing established* open solutions in other formats, reformatted into native HTML.

hCard from vCard. hCalendar from iCalendar.

This methodology leveraged years of prior hard open standards work by numerous others across numerous organizations, and deliberately avoided the bikeshedding trap of renaming things (or any other kind of non-trivial “clean-up”) while reformatting, thus making it easy for developers of one technology to see the 1:1 mapping and use the other.

The primary downside with this approach was formats that were larger than perhaps necessary for HTML-specific use-cases.

Eventually for microformats2 vocabularies, we adopted a subset approach, looking for web publishing use-cases for each feature, making h-card smaller than hCard, and h-event smaller than hCalendar.


Three: Success in a search engine was not enough, and sometimes attracted more bad actors than good. @KevinMarks.com, myself, and others at Technorati built search engine indexing and use of rel-tag and hReview, which helped evolve their specifications. A few other small search engines indexed rel=tag markup, however none remain today. hReview was adopted by Google which led to it being heavily spammed.

This pattern repeated itself with other microformats, and eventually we shifted from:
→ of course search is the first obvious use-case
→ search is one use-case among others
→ we need primary use-cases outside of search for longterm ecosystem success
Which leads to the fourth observation.


Four: Publishing alone is not a use-case. There must be multiple consuming code use-cases (beyond search) for a microformat to succeed longterm.

From individual features to whole microformats vocabularies, we learned that not only did there need to be sufficient content being published already, without microformats, that could benefit, but there needed to be good enough consuming code use-cases that benefited users (not just developers). The #IndieWeb community has been exceptionally helpful in both defining such use-cases and iterating on them with implementations.

We still get questions of the form: What’s the best way to mark this up?

I used to very much believe that if you could mark something up more semantically, you should spend the time & effort to do so. This drove a lot of early experiments with markup, and did provide some eventual benefits, most notably when semantic HTML elements provided good hooks for accessibility tools such as screen readers.

Now we know the answer to the question of “How should I mark-up this content?” must be accompanied by specific use-cases for consuming code of that markup.

If there is no consuming code use-case, it is not worth the time to add the mark-up (never mind the maintenance effort over time).

Sometimes one single consuming code use-case is sufficient to justify the time & effort to add more semantic mark-up. If that markup helps screenreaders, then it’s worth it. More often than not however, there must be multiple (again, beyond search) consuming code use-cases for it to be worth adding semantic markup, and certainly for developing new markup, whether microformats features or new microformats.


This focus on and repeated asking of questions like:
* What is the (consuming code) use-case?
* Or how does it benefit readers of this content?
has helped focus our modern microformats efforts on actual benefits to humans first, and machines second (if at all).


If you think of IndieWeb use-cases for existing or new microformats, come join us in the developers chat:
* https://chat.indieweb.org/dev

If you think of other use-cases or want to chat about modern microformats methodologies in general, join us in the microformats chat:
* https://chat.indieweb.org/microformats


This is day 32 of #100DaysOfIndieWeb #100Days

← Day 31: https://tantek.com/2023/044/t1/unified-sent-box-universal-outbox
→ 🔮


Post glossary:

h-card
 https://microformats.org/wiki/h-card
h-entry
 https://microformats.org/wiki/h-entry
h-event
 https://microformats.org/wiki/h-event
h-review
 https://microformats.org/wiki/h-review
hAtom
 https://microformats.org/wiki/hatom
hCalendar
 https://microformats.org/wiki/hcalendar
hCard
 https://microformats.org/wiki/hcard
hReview
 https://microformats.org/wiki/hreview
rel-license
 https://microformats.org/wiki/rel-license
rel-tag
 https://microformats.org/wiki/rel-tag
rel-values
 https://microformats.org/wiki/existing-rel-values
XFN
 https://gmpg.org/xfn/
XMDP
 http://gmpg.org/xmdp/description
XOXO
 https://microformats.org/wiki/xoxo


Previously, previously, previously:
* https://tantek.com/2019/044/t1/15-years-ago-introduced-microformats
* https://tantek.com/2014/042/t2/ten-years-ago-introduced-microformats-etech
* https://tantek.com/2011/042/t2/years-ago-presented-microformats-etech
* https://twitter.com/t/status/701095802


References:
¹ https://tantek.com/presentations/2004etech/realworldsemanticspres.html
² https://tantek.com/log/2004/02.html#d04t1311
³ https://gmpg.org/xfn/11#me
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/profile/#verification
https://hachyderm.io/@nova/109790530971147702
https://tantek.com/2023/032/t1/years-relmeauth-replace-openid
https://tantek.com/2012/353/b1/why-html-classes-css-class-selectors
http://microformats.org/wiki/events/2007-12-11-open-media-web
#microformats #microformats2 #IndieWeb #100DaysOfIndieWeb #100Days

@liztai Sorry you had to go through that. You handled it well, and I hope that you do feel free to express yourself however you want! I enjoy your posts so hope you can find your #IndieWeb spirit again.

@liztai Hey, what has been happening? I certainly understand the need to build something within the context of the #indieweb.

@adam @noellemitchell Yeah, that looks cool! I am going to use wordpress.com, however, so I used brid.gy instead to implement it. Maybe one day, when I have bandiwdth to once again have a self hosted space. Just glad that the #IndieWeb wizards created it for us!

I've always been a strong advocate for speaking up ... so this stance is something I don't really want to support, but I undertsand the physical, mental and even, monetary cost of speaking up. Oh well. If anything, this has been a good lesson in how important #IndieWeb is, and how I need to own the spaces I dwell online. I love #Mastodon but it's time to build my website :)
#POSSE - so that if those spaces are taken away, we still have our home.

Thanks to @tchambers for introducing me to the concept of #calmtech. Along with the #IndieWeb, what initially seems to be going back is actually a great route to go forward. Totally on board this. https://calmtech.com

Writing blog posts in a foreign language is really hard. I struggle so much to find the right words. It always sounds … kind of hacky!? #IndieWeb #WorkInProgress

Free and Cheap Things to do in Philly!
less than or equal to $15

Thanks to @jag for suggesting some food distros

https://www.pixouls.xyz/philly.html

#philadelphia #philly #thingsToDo #indieWeb

(2 of X)

...We intend to stick around for the long run and see where this Federated, openweb social movement may take us all.

From its beginning, its objective has been to provide a venue for creators of #indieweb, #fediverse, and #decentralized technology to cross-pollinate, as well as a place for regular people seeking a calmtech, openweb, sociable online existence....

Due to your generosity, we are in a stable and solvent position, and there is no danger of our demise....

Montaigne

This is an interesting little blogging tool: it turns a folder of notes on your Mac into a website.

  1. Create dedicated folder in the Apple Notes.
  2. Connect it to Montaigne.
  3. Add notes with your content.
  4. Everything will be published to the web automatically.
#blogging #blogs #indieweb #personal #publishing #montaigne #apple #notes #mac

It’s darn hard to set up a somewhat user-friendly #indieweb service.

Interoperability with some protocols requires you mix markup (i.e., microformats) with content.

The idea behind it was “DRY,” like, cut out the “metacrap,” have your HTML be the single source of truth, the one API you’ll ever need, and so on. Refreshingly simple, but it’s a bit of a pain even to seasoned web developers. (“Simple, but not easy.”)

Either way, it’s not easy building an intuitive interface that does all that

Are there any self-hosted versions of Pinboard (which is like del.icio.us used to be)?

I used to use Scuttle long ago... I see there is SemanticScuttle, last updated 10 years ago(!)

Pinboard is great but I don't use it for discovery, just saving my own stuff.

So really I want a self-hosted bookmarking system. (Preferably on a LAMP stack.)

#bookmarks #indieWeb #openWeb #browser

@madargon There is a whole movement dedicated to owning your content, publishing it on your own site, and syndicating it elsewhere called #IndieWeb

You can read more about it at indieweb.org

@liztai @noellemitchell

Nostr, love at first sight