#indieweb 2020-06-23

2020-06-23 UTC
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[tantek] jmac, I was right, your post was the inspiration: https://twitter.com/JmacDotOrg/status/1275170781744566273
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@JmacDotOrg Releasing a couple of new goodies this week, ahead of both #IndieWeb Camp West and #TPRCiC… First, a new page about Webmention, pulling together introductory information, live examples, and links to further resources: https://jmac.org/webmention/ (twitter.com/_/status/1275170781744566273)
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[tantek] aaronpk said like an IndieWWDC right after that
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[tantek] also Twitter has zero results for IndieWWDC
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[tantek] so um, that means we can hashtag it and go right?
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jmac Oh! No, that a quip aaronpk made after I tweeted that, yeah
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jmac If that moves everyone else to launch a Wild Web Discovery Conference or whatever we wanna call it, go nuts
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[jgmac1106] Welcome Sarah.
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[chrisaldrich] 🎉 [hibs]
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[chrisaldrich] [hibs]++ for already proposing a session for IWC /2020/West
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Loqi [hibs] has 1 karma over the last year
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[hibs] Thanks, hi everyone!
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[chrisaldrich] Thanks for coming tonight. Let us know if you need anything or have other questions before the weekend.
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jacky what is next-hwc
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Loqi https://indieweb.org/next-hwc
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petermolnar there are many indie/p2p/etc efforts out there - dat/hyperdrive, IPFS, scuttlebutt; etc - maybe a self-hosted activitypub silos, like mastodon, diaspora, etc fall under this category as well. Thinking about it, they could be, from our perspective, thought of, as indie "silos", meaning there could (should?) be ways to POSSE/PESOS to/from them. (I know brid.gy has an engine for mastodon). I'm curious about thoughts on this topic.
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[Steen_Comer] Hey all. I’m a writer interested in indieweb and related open technologies. I’m finally getting around to writing a post on convincing folks to use RSS, and while going through my notes found this chat, and thought I should see what it was like.
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[Steen_Comer] [chrisaldrich] I think it was via your article on Webmentions that I found this, so thanks for that.
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[KevinMarks] Hi Steen, do you have your own website?
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[KevinMarks] A good place to start might be with https://indieweb.org/social_reader
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[Steen_Comer] [KevinMarks] I’m centralized around https://mediapathic.net
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[KevinMarks] Getting a cert error there
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[Steen_Comer] ah hell, sorry, http://mediapathic.net
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[Steen_Comer] my provider is having some https issues
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[KevinMarks] There's advice on the wiki for getting https working (I don't have it either)
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[KevinMarks] BTW the headline on your top post needs quotes and attribution, it looks like you're deleting your own blog.
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[Steen_Comer] Hm, I see that.
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[Steen_Comer] I literally just pushed that out via blot, I’m experimenting with Quoteback for the first time, and I see that is not clear.
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[Steen_Comer] That blog is a relatively new thing for me. I’ve been mostly working in newsletter form recently
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[Steen_Comer] And I need to fix the links on the main page so that it is more clear that the archive is on tinyletter, not buttondown, as I’ve just moved there. It’s here, if you care to look https://tinyletter.com/mediapathic/archive
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[Steen_Comer] And I came in around 3am local, and it’s time to go to bed. I’ve mostly just come to idle and see what the current state of things is. I’m sure I’ll be dropping in to ask questions from time to time.
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[KevinMarks] we have some live events coming up too https://events.indieweb.org/ (all online now, the geographic labels are more timezone related)
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[Steen_Comer] Thanks!
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[KevinMarks] google docs as wikis but with good ux: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/06/06/1002546/google-docs-social-media-resistance/
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[jgmac1106] ^^^ response of every educator when I say "use a wiki"
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[jgmac1106] well they wouldn't say ux...just "why not Google Docs it is easier to use and everyone has an account"
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[KevinMarks] also, you. don't need an account for public ones, if there are enough people to repair vandalism
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[jgmac1106] yeah there are so many public google docs used as wikis in the edu world...prolly goes Google Sites is still awful
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[jgmac1106] cuz* not goes
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[KevinMarks] shame they don't just render as html any more, that was a big feature originally
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[jgmac1106] I think I have a collaborative story written by my students from when Google bought writerly.,...that was what it was I think...
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[jgmac1106] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vNMW7dcDC97e_WYLkZlQnAEB3vQsQpF7SEMWZXvRalA/edit
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[jgmac1106] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vNMW7dcDC97e_WYLkZlQnAEB3vQsQpF7SEMWZXvRalA/edit?usp=sharing
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[jgmac1106] it is color coded because this was long before revision history
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[jgmac1106] I still do a lot of download through html and then run through tidy html to put on websites....google changes all the urls to run their security though...you have to fix every one
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[jgmac1106] ....nobody does revision history better......you open the history of wikimedia versus gDocs...way easier o see who made what edit when....
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[jgmac1106] shared in another channel: https://getferdi.com/
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[grantcodes] There are so many of those things
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[grantcodes] https://tryshift.com
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[jgmac1106] ooh cool thans
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[grantcodes] https://meetfranz.com/ https://rambox.pro/ https://getstation.com/
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[jgmac1106] yeah starred with convo on franz
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[jgmac1106] grantcodes++
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Loqi grantcodes has 6 karma in this channel over the last year (24 in all channels)
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[jgmac1106] shared in other Slack groups
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jeremycherfas .
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[KevinMarks] Nice example of POSSE to newspaper https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/23/restaurant-reopening-4-july-boris-johnson-hospitality-businesses
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petermolnar "I run a restaurant in Cambridge. Here's why we won't be reopening on 4 July" - because my staff is happier furloughed till August? snarky, but potentially true, or somewhat true.
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petermolnar oh, sorry, this really is -chat, please don't respond here.
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[jgmac1106] ...kinda true petermolnar....my partner works in restaurants... they are having trouble getting people to work when they get $800 US in unemployment a week (200 from state and 600 from federal government)...so if a worker returns and make more than 200...they will lose the additional 600....
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[jgmac1106] I am sure there are a ton of people in Connecticut making exactly 199 a week in "partial employment"
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petermolnar my fault, please use -chat for this, like I should have done
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[jgmac1106] oops thought it was chat
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jasminlopez Grace Themes produces professional level Best WordPress themes (https://gracethemes.com) for bloggers, agencies, individuals and freelancers. When not building new and awesome WordPress Themes, you'll find us out in the sea catching waves. We pride ourselves in working to WordPress standards, expect to see simple, extendable code, great documentation & a plethora of other features.
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petermolnar hi jasminlopez, are those themes indieweb (so, microformats) friendly?
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[snarfed] got a bridgy publish feature request for mastodon-style content warnings, https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/47 . https://indieweb.org/content_warning has some thoughts on CWs, and one site actively publishing them (fluffy's), but no mf2 yet
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Loqi [fluffy-critter] #47 Better CW text for Mastodon item posts
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[snarfed] oops sorry wrong link, the new feature request is https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy/issues/952
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Loqi [jk-na] #952 enable content warnings?
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[tantek] [jgmac1106] Google Docs are collaboration, but not wikis. E.g. GD is crap for versioning. Yes theoretically you can view past edits, however UI for revert / unrevert etc. is crap. Compare with actual usable version history on an MediaWiki page. Usable versioning is absolutely essential for "safer" collaboration, where the community can much more easily undo damage from bad or unintentionally clumsy actors. In contrast, I see stuff "disappear" all
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[tantek] the time from GD, which leads to people feeling ignored / rejected and leaving. GD is very anti-community in that respect.
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[snarfed] the other thing i think wikis are way better at is integrating multiple pages together and making them feel much more cohesive as a whole. every google doc feels like an individual disconnected island. wikis reinforce the idea that the wiki as a whole is the unit that matters. encourages gardening and interdependence btw pages
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[snarfed] this is something i've felt strongly over the years, and advocated for in workplaces, but always had a hard time describing
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[LewisCowles] [tantek] what issues do you foresee with GD? I've never had an issue reverting other than someone just changing history again, at which point I fork the doc and don't share as a record of their actions
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[KevinMarks] That's true. You can link docs together, but they overhead is higher
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[LewisCowles] google docs isn't perfect, but I do like the comments, the way it doesn't force people who don't need HTML to learn too much
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[LewisCowles] Keep meaning to look into etherpad Algorithm to try to make edit history less awful, but SVN and Git are a little pants in this regard without additional controls too
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Loqi snarfed has 31 karma in this channel over the last year (88 in all channels)
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[tantek] snarfed++ right. Wikis are webby, GD are islands
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[tantek] [LewisCowles] not foresee, have had. History, versioning, diffing, undoing, reverting UI is night and day between MediaWiki and GD
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[LewisCowles] Did you blog about it. I'm interested in specifics as I don't have many kind words about MediaWiki
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[LewisCowles] I suspect you may feel the same about GD
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[tantek] I have many critical words about MediaWiki. However it's also the infrastructural foundation of Wikipedia, so that provides a certain validation of UX design (nothing else has scaled like that) that's worth humbly approaching and learning from.
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Loqi [indienews] New post: "Announcing Whim, a Webmention multitool" https://fogknife.com/2020-06-23-announcing-whim-a-webmention-multitool.html
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JK_na <Loqi "[jk-na] #952 enable content warn"> Yes, that was my ticket.
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[jgmac1106] give me five people looking through the revision history of google docs and the revision history of a mediawiki ...my hypothesis they will understand GDoc edits way better
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[jgmac1106] ...and the two UX designers for wikimedia hang here....so bonus
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[jgmac1106] https://quickthoughts.jgregorymcverry.com/2020/06/23/two-screenshots-comparing-revision-history-of-google-docs-and-wikipedia I am team wiki just saying I can't get anyone to want to learn how to install, add you logo, customize the page, and choose between installing a rich editor extension or learning wiki mark up....
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Loqi [Greg McVerry] ...which one looks easier to understand? https://quickthoughts.jgregorymcverry.com/file/9d829ea876c918824255330486572e5f/thumb.png
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[tantek] "easier to understand" is the wrong question
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[tantek] "easier to *use*" is the point
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[tantek] this is a good example of what I'm talking about, missing the point and being distracted by "pretty presentation"
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[jgmac1106] yes understand is a squishy unmeasurable state...but I will go with it easier to use as well
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[tantek] whereas what you want is a *usable* tool
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[tantek] there is zero UI in the GD example for viewing diffs across multiple versions, undo, revert etc.
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[tantek] the GD example is also exceptionally bloated and with low info density (per Tufte)
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[tantek] which makes it a poor *tool*
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[tantek] classic too much blank space by designers with massive monitors
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[jgmac1106] except for the tens of thousands of people who find it a useful tool for collaboration
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[tantek] when you're always adding yes. that's not my point
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[tantek] my point was specifically the usability of the versioning UI which is crap per the points I just made
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[jgmac1106] blank space does increase comprehension,..but yes infected with material design
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[jgmac1106] haven't read Tufte thanks for link
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[tantek] no, decorative bloated blankspace like that *harms* comprehension because it reduces information density
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[jgmac1106] butbut knowing +767 bytes changes and a doc is now 16,726...such crucial and useful information to a user
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[tantek] this is one of the big myths that Tufte debunks (basically go read his books on this)
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[tantek] having to scroll to see the info harms comprehension, people need to visually see stuff as a whole to see patterns etc.
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[tantek] the fact that there are numbers there is trivial compared to the poor design choices in the GD UI
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[jgmac1106] Kintsch & Keenan, 1973 show information density hurts comprhension
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[tantek] yes the numbers can be improved e.g. with sparklines. Tufte covers that too
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[jgmac1106] been a pretty stable research finding
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[tantek] nope, Tufte has debunked that since
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[jgmac1106] will read it, P. D> Pearson did find that sentence length is sometimes better longer....
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[jgmac1106] but I know of know reading comprehension research that says more information density = greater comprehension.
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[jgmac1106] Be an easy study...and I got to get some stuff out before tenure....still say with random sample people will ind gDocs revision history more useful and easier to understand
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[jgmac1106] tufte as in data visualization...cool will read up....people love pretty pictures...you don't even need good data
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[jgmac1106] this: http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~telea001/uploads/VACourse/Tufte01-2.pdf
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[KevinMarks] Tufte bears reading in full. That is a couple of chapters
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[tantek] This is a problem endemic in web design BTW. Not enough designers have properly read Tufte and are using visual design habits & assumptions decades old, especially when designing anything to do with data, including tables of information like a revision history!
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[tantek] there's also abundant UX testing methodology failures, e.g. focusing purely on "comprehension" rather than *usability*
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[tantek] like give someone a task to view differences across multiple edits
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[tantek] or give someone a task to undo an old edit
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[tantek] anyway that's borderline user / dev so we can take talk of design details / testing methodologies to #indieweb-dev
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[LewisCowles] If this were the case, why have many more not flocked to alternative systems. It seems like in this case the system is genius and us poor fools cannot help but fail to be impressed by it
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[LewisCowles] I'm not the most in awe of popularity as the masses are not good at being great at anything past continuing to exist, but...
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[LewisCowles] > having to scroll to see the info harms comprehension
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[LewisCowles] I think we can agree on this. However there is a finite capacity to the density that lay-users can make use of.
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[LewisCowles] Experts often have denser UI's
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[schmarty] I think a lot of why google docs may be perceived as easier is that folks think first about what they perceive as the main activity. Starting a doc, typing and pasting links, sharing a link for reading, these are things that gdocs has made incredibly easy
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[schmarty] Collaboration seems easy as multiple people can type, but quickly leads to conflicts and confusion. Comments are literally a new layer on top of the document.
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[schmarty] GDocs falls down on the "advanced" and meta-stuff. Maintaining relationships between docs, understanding and managing revision history. But by the time someone thinks of these it is probably too late
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[schmarty] Wow I used a lot of words to say "worse is better"
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[tantek] "worse is lazier" 😛
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[schmarty] Worse is also worse!!
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[tantek] It's a trap! 🦑
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[schmarty] What I was trying to say is that things like gdocs get popular precisely because it has focused design effort on what people *think* the primary activity will be
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[schmarty] And by the time they know better it is probably too late to migrate to something better
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[tantek] right, need something better that supports export/import migration
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[tantek] I've definitely seen teams use GD ephemeral and then copy paste the result somewhere else
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[tantek] kind of like we use Etherpad
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jacky https://kevq.uk/how-to-create-an-indieweb-profile/
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jacky hmm I don't understand why Kev is promoting the _hiding_ of an h-card
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[tantek] jacky, my guess is the prevalent messaging in the industry to stick machine-things in the <head> with <meta> etc. OGP, TwitterCards, oh this must be the IndieWeb version
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[tantek] the notion of hiding things for machines
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