Statuses

While the new community members section of the IndieWeb newsletter is just a tiny subset of people who are joining the IndieWeb movement by actively adding themselves to the wiki, it’s been encouraging to see expanding growth both here and in the broader web (even Tumblr) and Fediverse space since Musk announced the acquisition of Twitter.

Here’s to more positive growth to a healthier and happier online social experience.

Replied to a tweet by Moritz WallawitschMoritz Wallawitsch (Twitter)
I’ve created a Zotero group for Tools of Thought that many are beginning to contribute to. It’s got lots of material and history that is afield from the more common computer-centric resources you’ve listed thus far. https://www.zotero.org/groups/4676190/tools_for_thought
Playing around with Kevin Marks‘ changes to the base Tumblr theme which has added some microformats. It’s looking pretty good in most of the parsers I’ve tested. Here’s a good visual one: https://monocle.p3k.io/preview?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchrisaldrich.tumblr.com.

This makes me want to use and syndicate to it more often.

Replied to a tweet by Ed HeilEd Heil (Twitter)
The whole idea behind IndieWeb is that you can use your website to own all your content on a domain you own/control. You’ve got a site with webmentions set up, so we could be having this whole conversation from site to site. Instead, I’m choosing to syndicate/POSSE my replies from my site(s) to Twitter, to meet you where you’re currently at. Integrating my site with Brid.gy allows me to get your responses from Twitter back to my website. Here’s some more on threaded conversations between WordPress and Twitter that may help frame what you’re attempting. (It also includes a link of WordPress to WordPress or other site conversations as well.)
I’ve been following “Welsh Twitter” off and on, but TIL that there’s a Welsh Mastodon: Tŵt Cymru at https://toot.wales/about.

Bore da. Chris dw i. Dw i’n dysgu Cymraeg. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

I’ll have to figure out how to automate POSSE of my Welsh-related posts to my new account: https://toot.wales/@chrisaldrich. Until then it’s manual until it hurts.

But first, figuring out how to work this into my practice…

Replied to a thread by Mia (not her best work) and Zach Leatherman (Twitter)
I always circle back to the Lost Infrastructure chart here https://indieweb.org/lost_infrastructure and wonder:

  • in which boxes can the technology requirements be simplified for publishers and maintainers of individual websites but still allow for the broadest inter-operation?
  • which axes are missing?
  • which boxes need to be expanded with technology for better plurality?
Replied to As I continue reading and sometimes re-posting ... by Jeremy CherfasJeremy Cherfas (Jeremy Cherfas)
As I continue reading and sometimes re-posting things written on this day, I've decided to do one more thing at the end of a session: go to a random site in the IndieWeb WebRing. Today, I found something that resonates down the years: how to organise the content of a weblog.
These are fascinating questions, though looking at them from various perspectives and imagined audiences over time scales makes them more intriguing. 

Most often we privilege the chronological time order because that’s how we ourselves live them, write them, and how much of our audience experiences them.

But consider looking at someone’s note collections or zettelkasten after they’re gone? One wouldn’t necessarily read them in physical order or even attempt to recreate them into time-based order. Instead they’d find an interesting topical heading, delve in and start following links around.

I’ve been thinking about this idea of “card index (or zettelkasten) as autobiography” for a bit now, though I’m yet to come to any final conclusions. (References and examples see also: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=%22card+index+as+autobiography%22). 

I’ve also been looking at Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project which is based on a chunk of his (unfinished) zettelkasten notes which editors have gone through and published as books. There were many paths an editor could have taken to write such a book, and many of them that Benjamin himself may not have taken, but there it is at the end of the day, a book ostensibly similar to what Benjamin would have written because there it is in his own writing in his card index.

After his death, editors excerpted 330 index cards of Roland Barthes’ collection of 12,000+ about his reactions to the passing of his mother and published them in book form as a perceived “diary”. What if someone were to do this with your Tweets or status updates after your death?

Does this perspective change your ideas on time ordering, taxonomies, etc. and how people will think about what we wrote? 

I’ll come back perhaps after I’ve read Barthes’ The Death of the Author…

Also in reply to: 

Replied to Open Educators on Mastodon by Clint LalondeClint Lalonde (EdTech Factotum)
It is great to see many people in my network again testing the Mastodon waters in the wake of the news of the sale of Twitter. Discovering and developing a new network can be difficult and is often a big barrier to moving to a new platform so to help get you started, here is a list of peo...
Thanks for this Clint!

I wish that Mastodon’s list functionality was easier to use, but this method works well too. I won’t say anything about the irony of using the OG social network of the blogosphere to spread this useful information. 😉

For those fleeing Twitter, know that I post everything on my personal website first and syndicate it to a number of places including Twitter and Mastodon.

Much of my short status updates cross post to @chrisaldrich@mastodon.social while everything can be found at the “Mastodon account” @chrisaldrich, which is really just my personal website pretending to be a Mastodon server.

If you want your own website that acts a lot like traditional social media I also recommend you try out micro.blog where you can follow me @chrisaldrich. 

If you have difficulty finding/reading my content wherever your new internet home is, let me know and I’ll see what I can do to help. I try to support a number of open standards to be read in many forms and formats.

Before you leave, do let me know where I might find and stay in touch with you, because it’s the friends and the people that make any of this worthwhile at all.

Replied to Suggestion for blog-based social media by Mark EssienMark Essien (markessien.com)
Many of us write tens of thousands of words yearly. All those words are written on some corporate social media website, and they can wake up any day and ban your handle. When that happens, your entire collected works, which could represent a lifetime of thoughts are gone. We put so much effort into writing - we should not just make sure this writing is preserved - we should also ensure that we own it.
I love this idea. It’s the dream of many and the reality of a growing group. Some have mentioned that Micro.blog does this out of the box, but I’ll mention that I have some tools that allow me to do it outside of that. I use WordPress for my website, but it dovetails well with social readers like Aperture, Indigenous, and Together. Small standards and building blocks like Microformats, Webmention, Micropub, and Microsub glue it all together.

Here’s an overview of what some of it looks like: A Twitter of Our Own (short video) along with slides. Those with some technical expertise should be able to get this up and running for themselves.

If it’s your dream, I hope you look into the solutions and come join the growing community.