#indieweb 2021-03-01

2021-03-01 UTC
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[KevinMarks] https://usborne.com/gb/build-your-own-website-9781474950718
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[schmarty] Wowow this thread. Life comes at you fast! https://twitter.com/redman/status/1366137187117506560
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@redman Some personal news! ✨ Two friends and I created a new thing to fix online recipes 😄 http://recipeasly.com - your favourite recipes except without the ads or life stories 🍩 Feedback and RTs appreciated! 🙏 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EvV-h-yWQAY73wi.jpg (twitter.com/_/status/1366137187117506560)
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aaronpk Oh no I just heard about this
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aaronpk This is an amazing demonstration of the QT function on Twitter too
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aaronpk (QT just being surfacing what tweets mention other tweets, aka what posts link to other posts)
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[jgmac1106] Morning all
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jeremycherfas Morning [jgmac1106] Good to see you around again.
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[jgmac1106] Yeah first months of semester been a whirlwind. Only so many open source hours to go around
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[jgmac1106] To the recipe thing. Quite interesting, but the argument a user must suffer bad UX out of solidarity doesn't sit well
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[jgmac1106] Clearly people hate recipe site kruff. It is not the audience job to determine how a content author monetizes IP (in countries where recipes can be IP)
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jeremycherfas I'm torn about the recipe thing. When the writer is good, it is a pleasure. The rest of the time (99%?) it is a pain. But I know how to skim a page and get what I want out of it, so I'm not the market for that app, for sure.
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jacky also re: inviting new people at HWC, that's a good point
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jacky A good amount of us know the script "What's your website/URL?" et al
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jacky but I wonder if we could prompt that to newcomers quickly
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[Murray] RE: recipes, seen this shared a few times now as a less intrusive/obnoxious equivalent (though still not sure how I feel about it): https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/recipe-filter/ahlcdjbkdaegmljnnncfnhiioiadakae
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[KevinMarks] Well, h-recipe enables that kind of behaviour too
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[KevinMarks] http://www.unmung.com/indiecard?url=http%3A%2F%2Faaronparecki.com%2Frecipes
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Loqi [Aaron Parecki] Vegan Banana-Apple Bread https://aaronparecki.com/img/1240x0/2020/06/01/19/banana-bread.jpg
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aaronpk n.b. i don't have long meandering paragraphs of text before my recipes anyway tho
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[KevinMarks] Not that Aaron writes long preambles
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[KevinMarks] Hah
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[KevinMarks] I did make that work with an older version of the BBC site at one point
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[Ana_Rodrigues] It’s interesting - my brain by default ignores the intro texts (similar to how it ignores ads etc) so it really surprised me how the intro texts annoyed people.
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aaronpk yeah i 100% just scroll past all the text when i'm reading those recipe sites
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jacky same
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jacky like if I wanted a story, I'd go to Hoopla and find a book
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jacky tbh, if the format of it leveraged more double column flows on desktop, I wouldn't mind it
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jacky that + constant pop-ups begging to send me drip campaigns - I don't feel so bad
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sknebel there clearly is also a difference (both in perception and principles) between "reformatting as a service" (with others content being rehosted under other URL, possibly with extra ads on it, ...) vs local extractors etc
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sknebel see also threadreader
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sknebel IMHO they ran into that + bad framing on their part + got unlucky with how it was received
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aaronpk yeah, i use Paprika to store offline copies of recipes, which is much more like the "printed a recipe" thing the guy mentioned
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sknebel right, and (basically) nobody complains about that, despite it doing similar things technically
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aaronpk Paprika is much more of a recipe organizer app and can do a lot more than just strip out recipes from websites, but pitching a service as "fixing online recipes" is very very different
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jacky TIL about Paprika
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[cleverdevil] 👋
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[cleverdevil] Morning!
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Loqi guten morgen
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jacky morning morning
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[tantek] dang that recipe site / thread. oooops
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[tantek] you "fix" online recipes by building better online recipe search than Google (yes it's possible, Google neglects special search like that that's been around for many years. see also Google blog search)
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[tantek] you don't "fix" online recipes by building an aggregator that steals content
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[tantek] also the gendered white male deciding to exploit a bunch of women writers / recipe inventors thing is a very bad look
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[tantek] this is a classic example of some dude deciding some small market needed "disrupting" without really caring about the existing dynamics of that small market or its laborers
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[tantek] summary tweet: https://twitter.com/cloudy_kitchen/status/1366187793966333957
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@cloudy_kitchen @redman @Erika_Strong We literally have RSS email broadcasts set up for THIS EXACT REASON. So people can be notified when a new recipe is posted. It’s direct from us to them without some dick taking advantage of us in the middle. (twitter.com/_/status/1366187793966333957)
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[tantek] that kitchen thread is also a great example of how NOT to pitch RSS
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[tantek] you can literally s/recipe/blog post/ in the "pitch tweet" and "RSS" for the answer and piss off just as many bloggers
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Loqi RSS... we try to keep jargon out of this channel to make it more inviting to newcomers, can you move this to #indieweb-dev?
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[tantek] lolol indeed Loqi
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[cleverdevil] Woot woot, my health page is now responsive.
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[cleverdevil] I am so terrible with CSS.
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GWG [cleverdevil]: Many of us are
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GWG Design wise
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[cleverdevil] Well, I am halfway decent with design, its just keeping up with the CSS spec and browser support that is tough for me.
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[cleverdevil] I will say, I am impressed with some of the more recent improvements. I am using flexbox on my health page, and it made life a lot easier.
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GWG I used it for the first time on my photo grid
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GWG I am thinking of interesting time based tweaks to my website
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[Jacob_Hall] I thought this article was interesting, for those looking to scrape recipes. It seems Google has incentivized recipe websites to standardize their metadata so that they can appear on "recipe card" search results https://www.benawad.com/scraping-recipe-websites/
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[scojjac] Oh man I may have to play around with h-recipe ... I also love Paprika, both for stripping down recipes to their essentials, and as my recipe box
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aaronpk Paprika added support for that a while back!
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[tantek] I don't like the framing of "scraping" recipe websites. It feels both kludgy (unsustainable), and frankly a bit exploitative of who are likely independent, lower income, and often women creators.
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[scojjac] Honorable concern, but the solution to that is good designs that treat the recipe as primary content and the stories or more detailed, photo/video instructions as secondary content.
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[scojjac] Unfortunately, Google incentivizing "recipe cards" will lead to people staying on Google properties for recipes rather than actually clicking through to these websites. It's the kind of standardization that doesn't solve [tantek]'s concern either
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[tantek] Google standards efforts rarely (ever?) bother to specifically solve problems of exploitation of content on the web, especially from lower income folks, and marginalized folks.
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[tantek] something standards efforts in general need to do a better job at
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[Jacob_Hall] I like to scrape data for my own use: my folder of recipe bookmarks is getting long enough that it's hard to find what I'm looking for, and I've already seen some of the links rot. I see how it could be seen as exploitative, and I would certainly hesitate to publish a recipe unless I made significant changes to it and gave credit to any that I was inspired by.
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[tantek] haven't seen recipe cards yet (are they a new thing?) so perhaps we can capture some screenshots to properly critique them
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[Jacob_Hall] There are screenshots @ the link I just sent
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[tantek] [Jacob_Hall] caching content for your own personal use isn't (really at all) exploitative, since you're not attempting to resell or otherwise profit off of someone else's work
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aaronpk the problem is that's what the website creator was arguing his website was for
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[tantek] not really aaronpk
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[Jacob_Hall] I recently started using archivebox https://archivebox.io/ which might be my long-term solution for saving sites (including recipes) while preserving their original state
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[tantek] it was more than just for him
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aaronpk but the question is... does that also apply to people who are building tools that help you cache content for your own personal use?
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[tantek] if it was a personal website that he built for that, then fine. it was not
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[tantek] it specifically took an attitude of stripping down recipes from others, and the republishing those to others
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aaronpk no not republishing, it was for creating your own recipe book
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aaronpk https://twitter.com/redman/status/1366187523043696642
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@redman It’s worth clarifying, imported recipes are only visible to the user who imported them - similar to if a user had printed the recipe or copied it into a doc. We’re putting great care into make sure Recipeasly can’t be used to take away from the great work bloggers & creators do (twitter.com/_/status/1366187523043696642)
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[tantek] can't really enforce "only visible to the user who imported them" so no, that's disingenuous at best, naive at worst.
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[Jacob_Hall] This does get at a question I've been asking myself a lot recently. My website has always been primarily for me: a place for me to organize and serve my own content for my own use. If I publish recipes that I like using, the public nature of the site makes me more accountable for how/who I got them from.
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[tantek] ^ in general true about publishing content that may have originated (even in part) from other sources
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aaronpk what do you mean "can't enforce"? you put it behind a login
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aaronpk i haven't actually tried this website of course because it's shut down, but my assumption based on this thread is it's like a web based version of paprika
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[tantek] I suppose we won't find out so it's pointless to argue theoreticals
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aaronpk if you take that tweet i quoted at face value it's pretty clear
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[tantek] claims from tweets rarely translate into actual website functionality imo & experience
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aaronpk so bringing this back to practical ...
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[tantek] especially from someone who started with a really bad dismissive / exploitative take
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[tantek] instant loss of credibility
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aaronpk paprika is an app that lets you copy recipe content from websites for your own use
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[tantek] what is paprika
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Loqi Paprika is an OSX and iOS application for creating an organizing recipes for making food, that can import recipes from websites marked up with hRecipe https://indieweb.org/Paprika
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aaronpk are the developers of that app also exploiting the work of recipe creators?
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[tantek] recipes, as instructions really ought to be treated like code, so it depends on the license
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aaronpk they actually are
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[tantek] someone will do a GitHub for recipes that actually centers the people writing the code (recipes)
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aaronpk you can't copyright a recipe
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[tantek] that's the better approach
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[tantek] hmm not really going to bother getting into a legal argument since IANAL. I've seen them copyrighted in print etc.
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aaronpk technically the recipe itself isn't copyrighted, the narrative text around it is
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[tantek] also "can't copyright a recipe" presumably is a US-only perspective
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aaronpk lots of precedent and prior art for this if you search for it
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[tantek] not really a good way to make policy for anything web-related
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[tantek] also this is a distraction from "what's right for creators"
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[tantek] arguing copyright rarely actualy gets you to an ethically optimum answer 😛
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aaronpk that's why i was bringing up the paprika example
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aaronpk you brought up the license first ;-)
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[tantek] only in the context of GitHub
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[tantek] you could publish recipes on GitHub now with a license, no one is stopping you
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[KevinMarks] There is settled caselaw that you can't copyright a list of ingredients and instructions, and it is partly this that encourages people to write essays around recipes so that there is something copyrightable there. This also makes using h-recipe less attractive for them as then extracting the non copyright parts is easier.
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[tantek] again, presumably US caselaw 😛
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[tantek] please stop arguing from US legal stuff (especially as not a lawyer) for how to design something for the web
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aaronpk this starts getting into the incentives for publishing in the first place. people publishing content online generally need to get some sort of payment for that work. right now that is unfortunately primarily in the form of advertising revenue. that drives improving SEO to get more revenue, and it turns out the existing ad model does not incentivize publishing just a list of ingredients and instructions
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[tantek] disagree with "generally" aaronpk
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aaronpk "broadly"?
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[tantek] generally people here in the indieweb publish for all sorts of reasons, none of them having to get some sort of payment
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[tantek] nah
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[tantek] our whole existence as a community refutes that assumption
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[tantek] so don't play into it
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aaronpk that's very different from the kind of websites that publish recipes
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[tantek] it's a part of adtech based myths about the web
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[tantek] and certainly not something to optimize for
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[tantek] it's a crappy part of the web
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[tantek] so let's blow it off
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aaronpk blowing off the fact that people need to get paid for the content create is exactly what led to this guy making this website for "recipes without ads"
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[tantek] "need to get paid for" is usually a really limiting method of reasoning that's often neglecting broader contexts
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[tantek] who knows what actually motivated the making of that website. it smells fishy
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[tantek] (with apologies to vegetarians & vegans)
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[cleverdevil] I was actually thinking about all of this the other day in the context of YouTube.
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[cleverdevil] It hit me that I was subscribed to enough channels, and was bothered enough by ads, that I would pay for the premium YouTube subscription. As a result, my experience has been greatly improved.
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[cleverdevil] This is enabled by the fact that YouTube is a silo.
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aaronpk creators get paid more from youtube premium subscription than ad revenue too
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[cleverdevil] There is a critical mass of creators that I want to support, and I can do it with a single fee, rather than with microtransactions to a bunch of individual creators.
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[KevinMarks] I payed for Google Music, so that became YouTube premium too.
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[cleverdevil] That's hard to replicate with more traditional web content, which is decentralized.
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aaronpk same reason patreon is successful too
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[cleverdevil] Yup.
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[cleverdevil] The other thing to note is that Medium has tried effectively the same model.
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[cleverdevil] But, in my opinion, its an abject failure.
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[cleverdevil] So, I am not sure the model *can* translate to non-video content.
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aaronpk there's plenty of non-video content with patreon subscribers
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[tantek] I feel there are some opportunities around tipping for content that have yet to be fully realized (with good UX)
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[cleverdevil] That's true, [aaronpk]. Maybe it *is* UX at the heart.
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[cleverdevil] I dunno.
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[tantek] yeah agreed Medium is a failure for paying arbitrary creators (not just celebraties)
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[tantek] yeah it's a bit dated but has some germs of ideas for many similar things
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aaronpk the difference between patreon and medium is medium wants to own the content but patreon is just the payment mechanism and the content lives elsewhere
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[cleverdevil] Wasn't there some project a while ago that made it possible to pay a single fee to get ad-free content across all member sites?
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[cleverdevil] I remember something like this.
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[tantek] didn't we brainstorm about this a few days ago?
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[tantek] hopefully that wasn't in #indieweb-chat
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[cleverdevil] I like that idea/model, but it requires lots of great content to justify it.
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[tantek] [cleverdevil] no seriously we had a whole thread about this just days ago
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aaronpk in fact there's even bloggers on patreon so clearly the text format isn't even the unique thing here https://leavingworkbehind.com/can-you-monetize-your-blog-using-patreon/
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[cleverdevil] That surprises me 0% 😉
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[tantek] [cleverdevil] see https://chat.indieweb.org/2021-02-26#t1614368523092700
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Loqi [[tantek]] right, I'm thinking IndieWeb here 🙂
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[tantek] I wonder if there are enough random ideas there to assemble into a blog post
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[tantek] random but related
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aaronpk ah right the twitter monetization thingy
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aaronpk which is a lot like youtube's channel membership
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[tantek] it started about twitter monetization but the discussion was much broader
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Loqi hey aaronpk [tantek], it seems like this conversation is more appropriate for #indieweb-dev
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aaronpk which itself is youtube stealing patreon's business 😂
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[tantek] whaaaaat
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aaronpk wat
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[tantek] monetization?
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aaronpk yep
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[tantek] lol if that's dev
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aaronpk why did that get added?
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[cleverdevil] In other news, I started working on a post to outline how I built out my health tracking stuff. I am debating how in depth I should go.
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[tantek] 💸 😂
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[cleverdevil] How much detail would be beneficial to the community?
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[tantek] [cleverdevil] I'm thinking inverted pyramid style and cut it off when you get bored
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[tantek] alex11, easier to post about runs than moping
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[tantek] what is a run?
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Loqi exercise is a (typically) passive post type that represents some form of physical activity https://indieweb.org/run
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[Jacob_Hall] not too late alex!
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sknebel What is archivebox?
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Loqi ArchiveBox is an Open source, self-hosted, offline first, flat file backed Python program web page archiver that produces PDF versions, screenshots, WARC versions, etc as well https://indieweb.org/ArchiveBox
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sknebel looking at the page now, that looks a lot cooler than I remember it. gonna have to set that up somewhere and have a play
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[Murray] semi-related, but does anyone know if the Wayback Machine/Internet Archive can accept submissions via webhook? Or is it just the API? (tried navigating the site and gave up 😄)
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sknebel [Murray]: afaik only the latter nowadays
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[KevinMarks] I thought the web hook still worked, but I may need to check that
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aaronpk they turned it off a while ago
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[Murray] damn, ah well. Suddenly realised I could create a really simple workflow if they had one 🤷‍♂️
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[chrisaldrich] The start of a new haiku: "Yeet Yeezy yeeting"
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[scojjac] There's something very _internet_ about Loqi saying that exercise is a post type