Reply to Ryan Boren et al on the WordPress Link Manager, Calypso, and Indie Blogging

Replied to a tweet by Ryan BorenRyan Boren (Twitter)
Oh there’s just so much to say about the start of this thread, and it gives me so much hope for the open web as well as potential growth for WordPress.

Link Manager Update

The Link Manager still seems relatively solid and much of the infrastructure still works well, despite the warnings and lack of updates over the past several years. It would be nice to see it make a comeback and I can personally see many ways it could come back as a means of allowing people to better own their personal social graph as well as dovetail with readers. (This could also be the cornerstone of helping to make WordPress it’s own decentralized social network so that those who want to leave Facebook, Twitter, et al. could more easily do so and maintain their own data and infrastructure.)

If it were being updated, here are a few things that I might suggest as being imminently useful:

  • Update to the latest version of OPML; While the old version still works, there are some new toys that folks like Dave Winer have been iterating on including OPML subscription1,2 as well as some discovery tools.
  • Add in additional microformats support, particularly for display. Things like h-card, u-url, u-photo, etc. could make displaying these more useful for the growing number of microformats parsers. I also suspect that having OPML subscription support could be a major boon to the feed reader resurgence that is happening with the split of the server side/display side split occurring with the improving Microsub spec which now has one server implementation with several more coming and at least three front end implementations. I know of one person building a Microsub server for WordPress already.
  • It’s non-obvious where one’s OPML file lives within the plugin or that one can have or target OPML files by category. Making this more apparent from a UI perspective would be both useful and help adoption.
  • Provide a bookmarklet or browser extension to make it easier to scrape data off of someone’s homepage (or any page for that matter) and put it into the Links Manager data fields. This would allow people to do a one (or two click) solution for quickly and immediately following someone, saving their data into their site, and then via OPML subscription, they’ll automatically be following that feed in their reader of choice.
    • For doing the parsing portion of this, I might recommend the parsing algorithm being used by the Post Kinds Plugin, which parses a web page and searches for microformats, open graph protocol, and one or two other standards to return all or most all of the data that would be needed to fill out the data Links Manager can take. As I recall, this parser was being discussed by Kraft for potential inclusion into the Press This bookmarklet functionality to expand on what it had already provided.
    • From a UI perspective this would allow people to follow friends or others via a WordPress workflow almost as easily as any of the social media silos.
    • Another UI approach for comparison can be found by looking at the SubToMe universal follow button which was developed by Julien Genestoux (also of PubSub/WebSub fame). This version also uses some of the standard feed discovery mechanisms which a bookmarklet would want to be able to do as well.
  • As I’d written, following/subscribing has become more central to the social space, so upgrading the humble blogroll from a widget to a full page would certainly be in order. Having the infrastructure (short link perhaps?) to easily create a WordPress page out of the data would be quite helpful.

As Ryan indicates, the planet-like features that OPML subscriptions provide are immensely valuable in general, but also solves a tough problem that some of the best minds in the educational tech space have found perennially problematic.3

As for the title-less post types that are proliferating by the independent microblogging community (including the recent micro.blog as well as post types in the vein of likes, favorites, reads, replies, etc. which mimic functionality within the broader social space), the so-called (no title) problem can be  somewhat difficult since so many things are built to expect a title. Many feed readers don’t know how to react to them as a result. The Post Kinds Plugin faced a similar issue and recently pushed an update so that within the admin UI at /wp-admin/edit.php the title field would still indicate (no title) but it would also include a 28 character synopsis from the_body or the_excerpt to provide at least some indication of what the post was about. This also seems to be a potential issue in other areas of WordPress including widgets like “Recent Posts” which want to display a title where none exists. As the aside post format can attest, not all themes deal with this well, though there are other alternate methods for displaying some useful data.

 

References

1.
OPML subscriptions. Inoreader blog. https://blog.inoreader.com/2014/05/opml-subscriptions.html. Published May 26, 2014. Accessed July 18, 2018.
2.
RSS Reader InoReader to Support Dynamic OPML Subscriptions. CleverClogs. http://cleverclogs.org/category/opml-subscriptions. Published May 26, 2014. Accessed July 18, 2018.
3.
Groom J. Will Work for Feed Syndication Framework. bavatuesdays. https://bavatuesdays.com/ds106-will-work-for-feed-syndication-framework/. Published August 5, 2013. Accessed July 18, 2018.

Published by

Chris Aldrich

I'm a biomedical and electrical engineer with interests in information theory, complexity, evolution, genetics, signal processing, IndieWeb, theoretical mathematics, and big history. I'm also a talent manager-producer-publisher in the entertainment industry with expertise in representation, distribution, finance, production, content delivery, and new media.

6 thoughts on “Reply to Ryan Boren et al on the WordPress Link Manager, Calypso, and Indie Blogging”

  3. I want to stress the indie ed-tech perspective. Mainstream ed-tech is very much about behaviorism and surveillance. We need an indie ed-tech that can bring safety to the serendipity without monetizing kids.

    Link bomb:

    https://boren.blog/2018/03/11/bringing-safety-to-the-serendipity-in-digital-pedagogy/
    http://hackeducation.com/2017/11/30/top-ed-tech-trends-intro

    1/

    https://boren.blog/2017/01/28/communication-is-oxygen/
    https://boren.blog/2017/08/19/mindset-marketing-behaviorism-and-deficit-ideology/
    https://boren.blog/2018/03/24/default-to-open-open-education-open-government-open-data-open-web-and-open-source/
    https://boren.blog/2018/03/23/hyperlinks-and-education-in-the-disinformation-age/
    https://boren.blog/2018/03/09/feed-readers-and-microblog/
    https://boren.blog/2018/03/19/bring-the-backchannel-forward-written-communication-is-the-great-social-equalizer/

    Syndicated copies:

    Reply

  4. If I had a desert island EdTech, it would be blogging, and that is not just in a nostalgic sense. No other educational technology has continued to develop, as the proliferation of WordPress sites attests, and also remain so full of potential. I’ve waxed lyrical about academic blogging many times before, but for almost every ed tech that comes along, I find myself thinking that a blog version would be better: e-portfolios, VLEs, MOOCs, OERs, social networks. Sometimes it’s like Jim Groom and Alan Levine have taken over my brain, and I don’t even mind. I still harbour dreams of making students effective bloggers will be a prime aspect of graduateness. Nothing develops and anchors your online identity quite like a blog.

    Source: 25 Years of EdTech – 2003: Blogs – The Ed Techie 

    No other edtech has continued to develop and solidify (as the proliferation of WordPress sites attests) and also remain so full of potential. For almost every edtech that comes along—e-portfolios, VLEs, MOOCs, OER, social media—I find myself thinking that a blog version would be better. Nothing develops and anchors an online identity quite like a blog.

    Source: Twenty Years of Edtech | EDUCAUSE
    Blogging is durable, open, and democratic indie ed-tech.
    https://rnbn.blog/tag/blogging/
    https://boren.blog/tag/blogging/

    As Ryan indicates, the planet-like features that OPML subscriptions provide are immensely valuable in general, but also solves a tough problem that some of the best minds in the educational tech space have found perennially problematic.

    Source: Reply to Ryan Boren et al on the WordPress Link Manager, Calypso, and Indie Blogging

    I want to stress the indie ed-tech perspective. Mainstream ed-tech is very much about behaviorism and surveillance. We need an indie ed-tech that can bring safety to the serendipity without monetizing kids.
    Link bomb:https://t.co/IbiDWAgvtphttps://t.co/wujCPaWFqi
    1/
    — Ryan Boren (@rboren) July 18, 2018

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Indie ed-tech link bomb:
    Bringing Safety to the Serendipity in Digital Pedagogy
    http://hackeducation.com/2017/11/30/top-ed-tech-trends-intro
    Communication is oxygen. Build a districtwide collaboration infrastructure and an open by default culture.
    Mindset Marketing, Behaviorism, and Deficit Ideology
    Default to Open: Open Education, Open Government, Open Data, Open Web, and Open Source
    Hyperlinks and Education in the Disinformation Age
    Feed Readers, Micro.blog, and Digital Pedagogy
    Bring the backchannel forward. Written communication is the great social equalizer.

    @rboren I agree with @chrisaldrich and @audreywatters in fact believe #IndieWeb a moral imperative for a schools https://t.co/J4tTR7Ihqp (https://t.co/HDEjoGRUpV)
    — Greg McVerry (@jgmac1106) July 18, 2018

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    We also believe the path to becoming a better reader relies on becoming a writer. Children excel in production based literacy environments. The critical evaluation of online sources is no different. Any classroom exercise around sourcing must involve readers reflecting on their process and interacting in social spaces for reading. We believe the best way to do have students understand how the web shapes meaning is to use the web to make meaning. Part of any intervention should embrace students publishing on their own domain with parents and students in control of their privacy.
    We also believe teachers should be central in educational research. Part of any intervention must encourage educators to build, share and remix resources while reflecting on their learning in the open. We can not tackle critical evaluation alone. Furthermore we must recognize that our teaching corps requires a basic understanding of how you read and write on the web and the lack of skills in our teachers is a national crisis. Students will never be ready for computer science classes in middle school and high school if they are taught by educators who can’t add a link in an email let alone build a web page. By encouraging teachers to network through the use of OER sharing we can address the lack of skills.

    Source: Can the #IndieWeb Improve Better Readers and Writers Online? – INTERTEXTrEVOLUTION

    Reply

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