Replies

Replies to content typically on another site
Replied to Refbacks for WordPress Version 2.0 Released by David ShanskeDavid Shanske (david.shanske.com)
The Refbacks plugin is now updated after nearly two years. The plugin doesn’t need much attention, it always worked it’s based on the Webmentions plugin, and we’d done some work over there that I brought over, including a new retrieval class, improved type support, etc. The way I implemented R...
I love that this is already showing a refback from Loqi!
Replied to Webmentions + Eleventy Talk by Sia KaramalegosSia Karamalegos (sia.codes)
Slides and resources from my talk at JamStack Toronto.
First there’s the details of her post in particular that are cool, but I like how Sia is leveraging Twitter as part of the commenting system on her blog using Webmention and Brid.gy. This way for people who aren’t replying or interacting with their own websites (yet!), they can still take part in the conversation, but she can own it all in one centralized place.

In particular take a look at the great, and intuitive UI she’s got at the bottom of her post:

Join the conversation on Twitter. Or, if you liked this article and think others should read it, please retweet it.

Just click on the link, reply and go. It would  be nice to see other social platforms allow this sort of interaction. Setting it up for Mastodon should also be pretty simple too.

Replied to a tweet (Twitter)
Why bother with h-shitpost?! This should parse without any additional work:

<div class="h-entry">
  <time class="dt-published">2017-01-20</time>: 
  <p class="p-content">I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.</p>
  <span class="p-author">Donald John Trump</span>
  <span class="p-category">shitpost</span>
</div>

😉

Replied to My Ukulele Curriculum by Greg McVerryGreg McVerry (quickthoughts.jgregorymcverry.com)
I had my first lesson with Aldrine Guerrero today. As a goal we wanted to develop a curriculum for my playing. I decided to take
I’ve been debating learning either the ukulele or the banjo lately, so this definitely resonates (or should I say twangs?) with me. Thanks for the perspective Greg!
Replied to a post by w4rnerw4rner (micro.blog)
@c had to check out your website cos of the donny 1-letter handle. Great stuff pioneering IndieWeb + good to see someone else here working across tech & the arts. Your apsugen.com link is down FYI.
@w4rner I’m meaning to fix that Apsugen link and my WithKnown instance over the holidays. I’ve also been debating swapping my username out for something longer because I have the same issue with it. Thanks for stopping by and good to meet you here.
Replied to Obsidian by Dan Allosso (danallosso.substack.com)
New App, better graph
I love hearing about Dan’s explorations and use of many of these platforms. I’m curious if he’s got some answers about quickly making notes and getting them into these systems? I’ve tinkered with using Hypothes.is for it. 
Replied to Twenty Twenty-One Available for Download by Mel Choyce (melchoyce.design)

I had the privilege of designing this year’s WordPress default theme, Twenty Twenty-One, which was released yesterday alongside WordPress 5.6. I started working on the initial concepts for the theme back in July, so seeing it finally launched is fantastic.

This is awesome news. Congratulations on the culmination of a lot of hard work! I can’t wait to start tinkering with it, particularly to see what I can learn from it by looking at the code.
Replied to a thread by Scott JensonScott Jenson (Twitter)
Aaron’s site is so advanced, his replies on Twitter don’t have a permalink back to his site. So you’re missing out on the way he replies and collects replies/likes/reposts. See: https://aaronparecki.com/2020/12/10/7/

Mine is less so; you’ll see my permalink on Twitter back to my original.

It doesn’t look like he threads his entire conversations (publicly), but you can currently see the contexts and replies from your conversations at https://aaronparecki.com/replies.

screencapture of Aaron Parecki's site capturing conversation back and forth with Twitter

A difference you’ll notice is that Twitter caps me at 280 characters, while I can waffle on for days and Aaron’s website will likely (but doesn’t have to) capture it.

Webmention also allows for editing/sending updates, so I can edit after-the-fact and Aaron’s site will show it whereas Twitter doesn’t allow edits, so… I could also delete my response in the future and send a “410 webmention” and Aaron’s site should delete it.

I’m sure that Twitter, Facebook, and most other social media systems could implement sending/receiving webmentions in under a week (even if they’re dragging their feet on a well written spec) and add microformats to make cross-site notifications and comments a reality. It will assuredly require legislation for them to do so however.

Many common CMSes already support Webmention either natively or with plugins/modules, so there’s some pretty solid proof of interoperability with various software and programming languages.

Replied to a tweet (Twitter)
The original Press This spun itself off as a stand-alone plugin, so look there first to recreate its functionality. If that doesn’t suit, try David Shanske’s Post Kinds plugin which incorporates a lot of Press This functionality and extends it quite a bit. You can create bookmarklets with it that work well (including mobile).

Another option is Tom Critchlow and Toby Shorin’s Quotebacks which you might leverage though they won’t necessarily create new posts on your behalf.

If you’ve got some programming experience, you might be able to do something interesting with a set of bookmarklets I just made too.

I think I’ve also shared most of my documented workflow for using Hypothes.is for some of this too, though that may require some work on your behalf.

Another good option is to add Micropub functionality and use some clients like Quill, Omnibear, or others in conjunction with the Post Kinds plugin. I think Quill may also have some useful bookmarklets you can use with it as well.

Replied to Tags vs labels by Amit (amitp.blogspot.com)

But are “labels” and “tags” the same thing?

A long time ago, I read that they're different. The distinction as described was:

  • “labels” are when you mark your own content (first party)
  • “tags” are when you mark other people's content (third party)
I like the framing you’ve made in the definition of “label” and “tag”. I wish the distinction was respected by a broader range of people and programs as it could be more useful that way.

I’ve mentioned a subtle way of doing this on my site before: 

I also find that I have a subtle differentiation using singular versus plural tags which I think I’m generally using to differentiate between the idea of “mine” versus “others”. Thus the (singular) tag for “commonplace book” should be a reference to my particular commonplace book versus the (plural) tag “commonplace books” which I use to reference either the generic idea or the specific commonplace books of others. Sadly I don’t think I apply this “rule” consistently either, but hope to do so in the future.

Now I’m wishing that I had a separate “labels” taxonomy on my site to distinguish between “mine” and “theirs”. In using the Post Kinds Plugin for WordPress, I’m passively collecting labels (though it’s called tags) others put on their content (which is currently hidden in my internal metadata) and that is separate from the metadata tags I place on it. Being able to separately search the two could be a powerful feature.

↬ Ryan Barrett in bookmark of Amit’s Thoughts: Tags vs labels ()

Replied to a tweet (Twitter)
I sort of like the idea of networked thought via digital commonplace books. Being able to carry on longer conversations between notebooks in a sense. It shouldn’t matter how long or short the conversation is.

I attempt to do this with my own website(s) leveraging Webmentions for the back-and-forth portions. Twitter is often just a simple notification mechanism for those who don’t have that support yet.

Replied to a tweet by Benet 'Dr' Hitchcock (Twitter)
Just make a “like” post on your website with a u-like-of class on a URL for the target site. Then send a webmention. Examples/details at: https://indieweb.org/like.
Replied to a thread by Bopuc and Ryan Bateman (Twitter)
And for WordPress you can already use the Webmention plugin and optionally the Semantic Linkbacks plugin to implement sending and receiving them for your own site.

In many cases, sites sending these notifications with the proper microformats mark up means that you can get some really beautiful replies to show up in your comments section (esp. in relation to how the old linkbacks/trackbacks looked). Webmention also has some structure as well as potential extensions to prevent the spam that the prior implementations encouraged.

If you reply to my syndicated copy of this post on Twitter, I’m also using the free service Brid.gy to have Twitter send these notifications to my personal website, so I’ll see your reply on my original post without actually needing to visit Twitter directly. This means that not only can I do threaded replies between my site and another WordPress site (or any other site that supports Webmention), but I can do threaded conversations between my site and Twitter.

Now if you want to take this the next few logical steps, add Micropub support to your website, and start using a social reader like Indigenous. That will let you write replies to content in your reader that will automatically post those repsonses/replies to your website, but then your site can ping the site you were responding to! The specifications allow a true social media experience between websites running different software on different URLs. Some documentation for the WordPress side of things: https://indieweb.org/Getting_Started_on_WordPress

The more sites that support these specifications, the richer the ecosystem becomes.

Replied to a tweet by Sue Jones (Twitter)
Sue, I wrote a generally non-technical primer on them a while back. I think they could be used to some interesting effect in the OER space actually. Perhaps we ought to focus this month’s meetup on the topic?