Long ago and far away. And unforgettable. July 2005
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The launch of a new blog carnival was so exciting that I wrote my own summary, even though I was not the host. That job was very ably performed by Sara Jakša, who launched the carnival. The point of my roundup was to visit each of the sites and, by way of encouragement, send a webmention to each of them.
Naturally, I was very happy that Sara . However, it shames me that she thinks it is better written than her own roundup, given that English is my mother tongue and that I couldn't possibly have written it in any other language, unlike Sara. That it was also "more fun to read" is gratifying and gives me joy, the topic of this month's IndieWeb Carnival.
So, no desire to steal anyone's thunder, and happy to have been of use.
Webmentions allow conversations across the web. If you have linked to this post, put your post’s URL below.
Webmentions
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I mean, it is also a first of the yearly events, so the social expectations are not yet set. It is a lot easier to change them now, then it will be in a couple of years - assuming that the event continue.
Webmentions are a quite interesting thing. For the technical perspective, they are just a POST request to a website. This is almost about as easy as it gets in the internet. Sure, the GET request with the parameters might be even easier, since you could just say to the non-tech people that this is an URL, that you can put in the browser. Something harder to do with the POST request. But it comes pretty damn close.
On the other hand, it can potentially support any kind of interaction on the internet, that people can think of. Because it is just a technology to tell people that something is happening somewhere else. And that their website link was included in that.
Sure, this is all limited by the number people, that implement the webmention receiver on their side.
I know multiplepeople, thathavepersonalwebsitesandIwouldconsiderthem as close, as the people in IndieWeb community - in some cases more. But as far as I am aware, none of them use webmentions (if you do, hi! *waves a hand*). I am using the word friend during this even as what I consider the English sense, since I use the word more strictly in Slovenian and the list there is a lot shorter.
At least is should not be hard to get in the webmentions wagon? With the webmenton.io, this means just one HTML tag in the head of the page. And make the page in a way, that can use used as a login, which is a separate problem. As a tech person, it is a bit hard for me to figure out, how hard this is. Seems easy.
Though as far as I am aware, micro.blog does support it. Based on what I know of, this still seems to be the best way to have a Twitter-like conversations. So if that is what one is after, they could just start using that and would not need any technical knowledge.
It does pain me, that I can not think of how I wanted to describe the certain interactions types better then with Twitter-like. I think I need a better vocabulary. Still, based on what I have seen, micro.blog does this type of interactions better then current Twitter, Mastodon or BlueSky. Then, I did not use Twitter since 2014, so I am not missing this type of interactions and therefore might not be the best judge.
But the way interactions usually happen on the web in limited by the UX of the sites. Some interactions and easy and some are hard and some are impossible, so the social norms develop around these limitations.
Webmentions do have less limitations regarding this. The only limitation is, that the page you are mentioning is actually linked there. Let us take like for example. On the sites with consistent UX, a like is a like. It is that limitation, that make me decide to just not use likes on my website. It just does not seems to hold enough information to appear useful to me. Probably influences by both reading too many research papers about what big tech companies are doing with this data and books like Digital Minimalism and Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now and others.
It was interesting to read, that other people were thinking about the same interactions and came to the different usage. For example, both Tracy and Jo mention sending likes with the additional commentary in. Because of expectations and the design, both don't think people read the commentary of the likes. Except for Jo this seems to be a feature, and for Tracy this is a bit of the bug (if I understood correctly).
And so far we are only talking about something, that does not even creates a conversation on most websites. Well, that is not exactly true as peopledotalkaboutit, but it seems to be true enough. Links are just something I pulled from a quick history search and are in no good way a good representation.
At least all the discussion I saw about Facebook likes had been about profiling people and use in marketing, not it how people actually use them.
Then there are the usages, that are not yet well popular inside the group of people using webmentions. For example, I recently wanted to see, if there is a way to replicate gift giving on AO3 in my website. It original came as a feature for gift exchanges, something I do not need at this time. Even if it would be another interesting use of webmentions.
It did not seems to be a hard problem. What kind of microformats should I use on my side, so that other people could recognise it. They would not need to do anything with it, if they would not want to anyway. Thanks Martijn to at least tell me, that people had not discussed this before. And I could take this as doesn't matter how to do it. But the chat started to talk about something else by the time I saw it, so I am thanking you here.
So yes, I am using the gifting now with the u-gift microformat. Here is the first example. I am assuming everybody will treat is as the normal mention without any type, but I am satisfied with this. I don't need other people to anything special with it.
And there are many other potential uses of it.
I think James is quite good in testing different usages. He had both the tic tac toe on his website, as well as different polls. And has the service to aggregate very specific information from other sites with webmentions.
One idea that I have been playing around in the past, was using it to create a asynchronous story game. Since they are less dependent on the mechanics of the game then traditional role playing games, I think this would make them the easiest to move only.
I never did anything with this idea, since I did not think the overlap in the people interested in this and people having the personal websites is big enough for me. And while it would be easier with webmentions, it does not actually need webmentions, if people are willing to do some things manually.
The same is true for bloging carnival. Which I am glad I started, though James deserves some of the credit, since he gave me the last push. Does the webmentions make it easier - actually yes. Are the webmentions needed - not really. A lot of blogging carnival happen without this technology.
Though it was a good testing ground for webmentions, because I did not receive all that I think I should? I mean, if somebody submitted it and did not reach by a different channel, then I assume that should have gotten it, but did not.
Not sure if the problem was on my side or not. While I show the aggregate of all the links on my website for different reason, it is a way for people to also check, to which of their posts I link to - regardless of they got a webmention or not. Just ignore my bookmarks page, it is a mess, as I use it as a sort of temporary storage.
Talking about the blogging carnival, one interesting usage of webmentions would also be to get opinion on something in a chain letter kind of way. Sure, on Tumblr it might be used to see the background of the phones or to try to get the lock of the diary from the drawing, or answering random questions, but it can be used for multiple things.
Since it is 'Send a Friend a Webmention Day', let me try and start the example, even though I don't expect anybody to take me on the offer. Let's try a prompt.
Since we all here, lets talk about how you got into personal websites. Not how you got in the indieweb, but tell me about what was the trigger for you to start your first personal website.
So I am posing this question to the following people: Paolo, Mark, Angelo, David, Kevin, and Alex.
I think this is enough to start with. I intentionally picked the people, I had not otherwise mentioned in this piece. And there is a mix of people that I expect will range 'I want to participate in this' to 'This is a spam, I will ignore it'. Feel free to participate, if you had also been mentioned in other places in this piece as well.
You participate by answering and tagging other people to answer. For this, this is just removing an excuse, in case you don't know how to participate in today's event. A bit late for us for Asia and possibly also us in Europe, but it might still be a push to somebody.
I don't think I ever started something like this, so I am not sure if the first person needs to answer at the start. So I will answer, if somebody tags me back. I don't think it will come to this.
Because yes of course, there can always be perfectionism and lack of energy and social awkwardness that stops people for interacting. There are probably other reasons as well.
I am currently battling perfectionism in regard to writing a reply to Tracy's Barriers to a more social IndieWeb, since she raised so may good point. And then I have the feeling that I need to be just as good and putting unneeded pressure on myself. I do have something written for the design part of it, so I will post at least some reply to it.
And I am battling social awkwardness with regard to this Jeremy's reply to me. I never intended to cause somebody shame, since this was me just being enthusiastic about something I liked. But everything I write just seems like it will make things worse, so here I will most likely go without any response.
Did inspire a draft or two I might eventually post without the reference to that, but... yeah. Though, he might see this comment, and that might make it worse... I will leave it here regardless, since it does pertain to the use of webmentions as well.
I have some others, but I think these are the only ones in the webmention receiving part of community.
If you lack energy, then please get rest.
So on the end, webmentions is simple and amazing technology for the interactions. Here I shared just some of my thinking of it, since I do want this technology to succeed.
I have also recently read, that links used to be something, that people were not sure if they were allowed to do. If anybody did not want to be mentioned, tell me and I will remove you from the post.
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