I’ve also seen some tangential mentions among the Blogging Futures crowd of Webmention, which is essentially a standardized web technology that allows notifications or @mentions between websites on different domains and running completely different software. I know that Tom Critchlow, who is a memeber of the blogchain, has recently set up webmentions, so I’m curious to hear his impression of what a blogchain means after he’s begun using webmention. (Difficultly, he’s using a static site generator, which will tend to make his experience with them a tad more fraught compared with services that have it built in or available by simple plugins.) To me there’s more value in combining the two ideas of Webmention and blogchain wherein each post is able to webmention the other posts within a particular blogchain and thereby create a broader web of related ideas.
Of course this is all very similar to ideas like IndieNews and Kicks Condor’s IndieWeb.xyz aggregation hub which allow users to post to them by means of Webmention. In some sense this allows for a central repository or hub that collects links to all of the responses for those who want to to participate. These responses could obviously be sorted by topic (aka tag/category), author, and even date. Naturally if each post includes links to all the other pieces in such a blogchain, and all the sites accept and display webmentions, then there will be a more weblike chain of discussion of the topic rather than a more linear one.
I’m not aware of it being done, but I’ve always sort of wished that someone would add webmention support to a wiki platform. Many has been the time I wish I could have added a link into the See also section of the IndieWeb wiki simply by linking to a particular page and sending a webmention. Lots of my online documentation references that wiki and it would be wonderfully useful for links to my content to automatically show up there. Later, others could add some of my content back into the wiki in a more fully fleshed out way, but at least the references would be there. Imagine how the world’s knowledge would be expanded if a larger wiki like Wikipedia had the ability to accept incoming links this way!?
I’ll mention that both the aggregation hubs and the wikis can help to serve as somewhat more centralized means of discovery on the web, which also helps to fuel idea and content production.
All the people I know who have added Webmention have generally fallen in love with it as a new means of posting into and interacting within a rejuvenated blogosphere. There’s more power in posting to one’s own website while still being able to interact in a more social sort of way.
On Blogging Infrastructure
On Blogging Infrastructure
@c Thanks for the reminder about blogchains (Elderblogging as Rao originally called it.) I wanted to mention it in a recent post but couldn’t remember where I’d read about it.
On Blogging Infrastructure
On Blogging Infrastructure
Read Tinkering by CJ Eller (blog.cjeller.site)
He doesn’t link directly to it, but this post directly follows one of mine within the blogchain. Here’s the original: https://boffosocko.com/2019/11/15/on-blogging-infrastructure/
–November 17, 2019 at 02:33PM
I’ll agree that there is no silver bullet, but one pattern I’ve noticed is that it’s the “small pieces, loosely joined” that often have the greatest impact on the open web. Small pieces of technology that do something simple can often be extended or mixed with others to create a lot more innovation.
–November 17, 2019 at 02:35PM
Syndicated copies to:
Syndicated copies:
If this blog had a tagline it would be “an ongoing conversation with myself.”
I wanted to talk about blogchains, or threads, and Elder-blogging in “Blogging for now” but couldn’t remember where I’d read about it. Chris Aldrich’s post “On blogging infrastructure” reminded me.
It was an idea formulated by Venkatesh Rao at Ribbon Farm.
An Elder blog is one which has been around for a while and has “significant history” (i.e. a decent amount of content) such that it can be viewed holistically rather than on a per post basis, teasing threads woven into its fabric.
I’ve described the blog as this ongoing conversation on numerous occasions over the years, often referring to earlier posts but think I fall down on turning those references into full threads, building on previous ideas. I tend to blog more in “batches” with a series of posts on the same topic in quick succession (I’ve mentioned this before but can’t find it) but this isn’t really the same as a blog chain.
The elder-blog is a direct contrast to the idea of truly blogging for now where posts are of the moment, disposable.
This blog is now around eleven and a half years old (the first five years of my blogging life have been lost except for scattered instances on the Internet Archive) but it’s not quite prime elder-blog real estate yet due to my taking various, often protracted, breaks.
Still, as much as I’m curious about how a “blog for now” would really work (even to the point of removing old posts, just as with tweets) it is the potential for continuity, for themes, and for talking to myself – past and future – that makes the blog what it is.
It’s just need to do more of it.
A learning adventure exploring alternative forms of blogging
This course is a group odyssey around a simple question: how can we expand upon blogging as a medium?
Blogging dead, long live blogging!
Enrollment
All you need is a way to publish a post! A blog works best but you don’t need one to enroll. There are many great anonymous publishing platforms out there like Write.as, text.fyi, and Telegraph.
Structure
The course is structured like a giant ongoing discussion made through blog posts. Each week there will be a prompt post which will include some questions and resources to riff off of. They can be found in the blogchain towards the bottom.
When writing, simply add a link to this post at the beginning/end so others can join in. You could do something like this:
Part of the Blogging Futures course blogchain. Feel free to join!
Once your post is published, you will want to add it to the blogchain so others can read and participate in the developing conversation. You can add your post to the blogchain through this form:
(If the app is ever down, just respond with a link to your post on this thread and I will make sure to add your post to the chain!)
Once submitted, your post will appear below. You are not limited to a number of posts per week, so feel free to write as much as possible. Since the goal is to have a developing conversation across posts, linking to others in the thread and responding to their thoughts is encouraged.
Happy writing!
Blogchain
10/30 to 11/6 – Prompt 1 – Paradigms
CJ Eller, Community of Gardens
Tom Critchlow, New Blogging 2 – Open Blogchains
Jared, Paradigms for blogging social infrastructure
Brendan Schlagel, Proposal for Near-Future Blogging Megastructures
CJ Eller, Towards an ethos
Azlen Elza, Writing as Distilled Thought
11/6 to 11/13 – Prompt 2 – Infrastructure
Anonymous, An Infrastructure of Paper
CJ Eller, Infrastructure for Infrastructures
Jared, Sociotechnical and technosocial infrastructure
11/13 to 11/24 – Prompt 3 – Reflection
Chris Aldrich, On Blogging Futures
CJ Eller, Tinkering
Chris Aldrich, Thoughts and annotations on Brendan Schlagel’s Proposal for Near-Future Blogging Megastructures
Chris Aldrich, Brief response to Prompt 3 – Reflection
Chris Aldrich, Thoughts and annotations on CJ Eller’s Tinkering
CJ Eller, Loosely Joined
Chris Aldrich, Read “An ongoing conversation” by Colin Walker
HH, Aggregators