Chris Aldrich Blog: BoffoSocko.com

Drutopia’s mission sounds a little to me like Drupal with Indieweb philosophy baked in from the start. It’s also not too different from Backdrop CMS’s mission as a Drupal fork.

🎧 The Contrafabulists Episode 52: Annotations

Listened to The Contrafabulists Episode 52: Marginalia

In this episode, we talk about Audrey's decision to block annotations from her websites.

A great little episode that talks about annotations, but impinges on a lot of issues relating to ownership and running of a (personal) website. It discusses a lot of things that folks on the web often take for granted, but which should really be done with a lot more civility and care for others.

While I have been seeing some really great and thoughtful conversations, particularly in the last 6 months or more, as a result of people posting on their own websites and using open standards like webmentions to carry on conversations, the rest of the internet still needs to take great strides to improve itself. A lot of these issues are ones of bias, and particularly of the white male sort, but I think that the ideas encapsulated in this short podcast will help to open people’s eyes. While it’s sad that Audrey had these experiences on Twitter, I’m glad that she and Kin took the time to discuss them here in hopes of improving the space in the future for others.

https://soundcloud.com/contrafabulists/episode-52

Un-Annotated by Audrey Watters

Read Un-Annotated by Audrey Watters (Hack Education)

Why Audrey Watters has blocked annotations from News Genius and Hypothes.is from her website.

I thought Audrey Watters’ post on why (and how) she prevents others from annotating her website was so important that I needed to highlight and annotate a few sections for myself for future use on my own site cum commonplace book. Her comments about ownership, control, and even harassment are all incredibly germane to the Indieweb movement as well.

I also wanted to use this post as an experiment of sorts to see how sound her script actually is with respect to people using both of the annotation services she mentions.

The text of her post appears below in full and unaltered (as it did on 2017-05-17 aside from my obvious annotations and highlights). It (and my commentary and highlights) is (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) as she originally licensed it.

I’ve spent some time thinking about this type of blocking in the past and written about a potential solution. Kevin Marks had created a script to help prevent this type of abuse as well; his solution and some additional variants are freely available. — {cja}

I have added a script to my websites today that will block annotations – namely those from Genius and those from Hypothes.is. I have been meaning to do this for a while now, so it’s mostly a project that comes as I procrastinate doing something else rather than one that comes in response to any recent event.

I took comments off my websites in 2013 because I was sick of having to wade through threats of sexualized violence in order to host conversations on my ideas.

My blog. My rules. No comments.

The article linked at the bottom of the paragraph is a must read in my opinion and sparked some of my original thoughts last year about this same phenomenon. I suspect that Ms. Watters has been wanting to do this since this article was posted and/or she read it subsequently. — {cja}

I’ve made this position fairly well known – if you have something to say in response, go ahead and write your own blog post on your own damn site. So I find the idea that someone would use a service like Hypothes.is to annotate my work on my websites particularly frustrating. I don’t want comments – not in the margins and not at the foot of an article. Mostly, I don’t want to have to moderate them. I have neither the time nor the emotional bandwidth. And if I don’t want to moderate comments, that means I definitely do not want comments to appear here (or that appear to be here) that are outside my control or even my sight.

This isn’t simply about trolls and bigots threatening me (although yes, that is a huge part of it); it’s also about extracting value from my work and shifting it to another company which then gets to control (and even monetize) the conversation.

Does the script Audrey Watters is using really stop people from annotating her site directly?

Based on my quick test, one can still (carefully) use Hypothes.is to highlight and annotate her site, but the script at least prevents Hypothes.is from showing that annotation. When visiting her site with Hypothes.is’ Chrome browser extension on, it does show that there is one annotation on the page. It then requires some hunting to find this comment.

And this particular post is proof of the fact that it can still be annotated, but without impinging on the sovereignty of the original author or her site. — {cja}

Blocking annotation tools does not stop you from annotating my work. I’m a fan of marginalia; I am. I write all over the books I’ve bought, for example. Blocking annotations in this case merely stops you from writing in the margins here on this website.

Source: Un-Annotated by Audrey Watters (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Review and notes from The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo

The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing Book Cover

Title: The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing
Author: Marie Kondo
Genre: House & Home
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
Release Date: October 14, 2014
Format: Kindle e-book
Pages: 226

Presents a guide to cleaning and organizing a living space, discussing best methods for decluttering and the impact that an organized home can have on mood and physical and mental health.

Amazon

I originally picked this up on April 18th when my brother Steve had asked me if I could track down a copy for him. Last week another friend mentioned it at brunch with her recommendation, so I thought I’d give it a shot.

Kondo does an excellent job of highlighting the most important parts of the book as she goes along, so it’s rather easy to skim back through the book for important parts.

The basic gist is to get rid of everything in one’s home that doesn’t “spark joy” when physically holding it. It’s not too dissimilar to the philosophy set forward by designer/artist William Morris who once said, “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

Most of the book is devoted to some of the basic philosophy as well as recommendations about how to go about paring things down and storing them. In particular I found some of her ideas about folding things interesting and I was a bit surprised at how one can differently fold things to not only save space in drawers, but to also make them easier to see and choose.

I went so far as to watch some videos about how she folds:

This series of short videos and a few longer talks do a relatively good job of encapsulating the contents of the book.

An interesting thing I find in what I’m supposing is a translation from Japanese is that though the translation is strong, the flavor of the writer’s Japanese culture still burns through the philosophy and story of the work. To me these were some of the most interesting parts of her story.

Reading Progress

05/06/17 started reading
05/06/17 72.0% done; “A quick and breezy read with some simple prescriptive actions.”
05/08/17 100.0% done
Finished book on 05/08/17