Read Can someone add some more HTML tags, please? by Dries BuytaertDries Buytaert (dri.es)
Every day, millions of new web pages are added to the internet. Most of them are unstructured, uncategorized, and nearly impossible for software to understand. It irks me. Look no further than Sir Tim Berners-Lee's Wikipedia page: The markup for Tim Berners-Lee's Wikipedia page; it's complex and inc...

We definitely need more rich mark up that’s parseable and usable. I’m not sure that additional HTML tags would necessarily be taken up heavily to be of much use.

I do like having some solid microformats on my own content and it works out well with many of the parsing tools that I use regularly for consuming content. I’m curious what Dries has tried out in terms of options he’s dogfooded into Drupal? I do notice that when my website parses his article, it does pull in more data than most sites I come across. The one thing my parser didn’t find was his avatar in the “correct” place. It popped up as a page photo rather than an avatar for him as an author.

Putting microformats into Wikipedia seems like an interesting idea. Anyone want to manually add microformats to tbl’s Wikipedia page? 🙂

Those who are paying attention at will see the value in webmention for allowing cross-site interactions without the need for “social media”. WithKnown, Drupal, Grav, and other CMSes are capable of doing this too.

(Ownership of your Open Pedagogy Anyone? Who needs invasive corporate social media to interact online now?)

Liked a tweet by HongPong (aka scrappy new year - think creatively)HongPong (aka scrappy new year - think creatively) (Twitter)
Read We're closing Crosscut's comment section. Here's why — and what's next by Ana Sofia Knauf, Anne Christnovich, Mohammed Kloub (crosscut.com)
With the rise of social platforms and an uptick in threatening comments, the newsroom is taking reader engagement in a different direction.

We analyzed our Disqus data and we found that roughly 17,400 comments were made on our site in 2019, but 45% came from just 13 people. That data tells us that social media, email, phone calls, letters to the editor, our Crosscut events and an occasional visit to the newsroom are far better tools for us to hear about your concerns, story ideas, feedback and support.

The Disqus data statistics here are fascinating. It also roughly means that those 13 people were responsible for 600+ comments on average or roughly 2 a day every day for the year. More likely it was a just a handful responsible for the largest portion and the others tailing off.

Sadly missing are their data about social media, email, phone, and letters to the editor which would tell us more about how balanced their decision was. What were the totals for these and who were they? Were they as lopsided as the Disqus numbers?
Annotated on January 08, 2020 at 04:33PM

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It seems like they’ve chose a solution for their community that boils down to pushing the problem(s) off onto large corporations that have shown no serious efforts at moderation either?

Sweeping the problem under the rug doesn’t seem like a good long term answer. Without aggregating their community’s responses, are they really serving their readers? How is the community to know what it looks like? Where is it reflected? How can the paper better help to shape the community without it?

I wonder what a moderated IndieWeb solution for them might look like?
Annotated on January 08, 2020 at 04:42PM

It would be cool if they considered adding syndication links to their original articles so that when they crosspost them to social media, at least their readers could choose to follow those links and comment there in a relatively continuous thread. This would at least help to aggregate the conversation for them and their community while still off-loading the moderation burden from their staff, which surely is part of their calculus. It looks like their site is built on Drupal. I would suspect that–but I’m not sure if–swentel’s IndieWeb Drupal module has syndication links functionality built into it.

Rather than engaging their community, it almost feels to me like they’re giving up and are allowing a tragedy of their commons when there may be some better experimental answers that just aren’t being tried out.

The worst part of this for me though is that they’ve given up on the power of owning and controlling their own platform. In the recent history of journalism, this seems to be the quickest way of becoming irrelevant and dying out.

Liked a tweet by Kristof De Jaeger (Twitter)
Read Who sponsors Drupal development? (2018-2019 edition) by Dries BuytaertDries Buytaert (dri.es)
An in-depth analysis of how Drupal's development was sponsored between July 1, 2018 and June 30, 2019.
I love the depth and reflection Dries puts into this report. Having recently watched the State of the Word for WordPress, I wonder if WordPress publishes these sorts of numbers and analysis? Could they in the future?
Replied to a tweet by Katherine MossKatherine Moss (Twitter)
There’s no reason you can’t have multiple websites. Several of us do it for a variety of reasons:
https://indieweb.org/multi-site_indieweb

I’ve been running versions of both for many years and they each have their pros and cons. In terms of IndieWeb support they’re both very solid. Why not try them both for a bit and see which appeals to you more? Depending on your skill level and what you’re looking for in your site you may find one easier to run and maintain than another.

Personally I’ve used WithKnown (I’ve used it for multiple sites since it started) in a more “set it and forget it” mode where I just post content there and worry less about maintenance or tinkering around. On my WordPress site  I tend to do a lot more tinkering and playing around, particularly because there is a much larger number of plugins available to utilize without writing any of my own code. Lately I am kind of itching to play around with Drupal again now that it has a pretty solid looking IndieWeb module (aka plugin).

Replied to a tweet by Marc DrummondMarc Drummond (Twitter)
I notice you’re a Drupalista. Would it help to know that Kristof De Jaeger has already done a huge amount of the work for you? See: https://www.drupal.org/project/indieweb

And Dries has been writing a lot about it over the past year as well.

Building toward an independent web isn’t something one does overnight anyway. Small incremental steps will eventually win the day. I like the way that Brent Simmons describes what he’s working on and why. Perhaps that could be a useful model in addition to the related idea of itches?

If it helps you might take your passions for “diversity, inclusion, equity & justice” and inject them into the space? I would always welcome help in those areas for the broader community.

👓 First stable release of the IndieWeb module for Drupal 8 | realize.be

Read First stable release of the IndieWeb module for Drupal 8 by swentelswentel (realize.be)
Say hello to the first stable release of the #IndieWeb module for #Drupal 8! https://realize.be/blog/first-stable-release-indieweb-module-drupal-8
Congratulations! This is awesome.

👓 Paid contributing to Drupal | realize.be

Read Paid contributing to Drupal by swentelswentel (realize.be)
Doing maintenance on Display Suite today, thanks to @dropsolid ! One day a month does make an impact, so let's talk to see if I can get more days :) #drupal
This is awesome news. I wish there were more companies who did this sort of thing.

👓 Pulling the plug on Facebook | Dries Buytaert

Read Pulling the plug on Facebook by Dries Buytaert (dri.es)
I'm pulling the plug on Facebook because of their recent privacy violations — which got me thinking about what is next for the Open Web.
I want to pull the plug myself. I’ve essentially stopped using Facebook and have had the mobile app off my phone for almost a year and a half. I’m half waiting for better data export so I can keep all my data the way I’d like, but I’m beginning to think the moral imperative to just leave is more important.