#indieweb 2021-08-24

2021-08-24 UTC
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GWG Just changed my shortlink base URL, although the old one still redirects.
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GWG Fiddling with the link style presentation for links to posts on my site. Instead of my usual icons, photos are getting thumbnails
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petermolnar I think we should revisit https://indieweb.org/2012/Positive_Arguments , make it into a proper page linked on /why, and maybe discuss which parts are still relevant, which might have gone stale, and if there's anything missing, add it.
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petermolnar would people be interested in a pop-up session around this?
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petermolnar In short, it was the possibility to make a completely custom representation of one's self, including colours, imagery, everything. The epotime of this was probably Flash, the most popular of it was myspace profiles, and I'm starting to believe that we're losing this from the web.
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petermolnar I was not in indieweb in 2012, so I found this through searching for "self expression" which, surprisingly, is completely missing from the wiki. The trigger for the search was that I was again presented with a gemini related comment in HN, and I came to realize that gemini is the antithesis of what, in my opinion, made the internet such a wonderful place in the 90s and 2000s.
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petermolnar there are exceptions - see [Ana_Rodrigues]'s redesigned site for example - but it might be nice to emphasize this aspect of having your own corner on the web.
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capjamesg[d] petermolnar I love this comic: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/email_address
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capjamesg[d] (Linked in the document you sent above)
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capjamesg[d] Such a pop-up session is something in which I am interested.
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capjamesg[d] I think what interests me most is teaching people about the indieweb without teaching them about the IndieWeb.
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capjamesg[d] A more articulate way of phrasing that sentiment is currently processing in my mind.
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capjamesg[d] What appeals to me most is not so much following a checklist of standards or tasks.
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capjamesg[d] Rather, what interests me is knowing people who have built their own site and how they built it. And I might take some of what I learn and apply it to what I want to create.
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capjamesg[d] I love this "Non-negative reasons for the indie web (it's a marketing problem not a technical one) "
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capjamesg[d] Some reasons I have a site, briefly: I like coding, I like writing, I wanted to share what I had written with the world, I was not happy with what other platforms gave me, I like being able to control the layout of my design, I have been able to brush up my coding skills.
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[jgmac1106] petermolnar maybe connect to principle 11
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petermolnar "principle #11" sounds disturbingly distopian :D
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[chrisaldrich] I think it could be interesting to revisit /2012/Positive_Arguments. It's got a pretty comprehensive list, so perhaps centering the focus on expanding the "how" portion would be particularly useful. petermolnar, go ahead and sketch out something on the wiki /2021/Pop-ups/Sessions
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[chrisaldrich] sadly someone has already has principle11.com. Probably all for the best (and my pocketbook).
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[chrisaldrich] though following Peter's comment, maybe a .org would be better?
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[chrisaldrich] 😁
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[tantek] petermolnar I would support that, shall we continue planning brainstorming in #indieweb-meta?
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[tantek] on an personal site related note, has anyone else received unsolicited email with a sentence like "One of our clients has shown interest in being featured on an article on your website." ? Curious how widespread (or not) of a problem this kind of solicitation for paid placement is.
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[schmarty] tantek: i've had a couple of those 😂
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[snarfed] yup, hundreds. one or two a week, for a long time
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GWG [tantek]: I am looking at reproducing your sidebar photo grid
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[tantek] GWG, I am looking at reproducing, er, restoring it as well 🤦‍♂️
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[tantek] happy to chat details in #indieweb-dev
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petermolnar I receive quite a few of those emails as well.
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[tantek] wondering if it's worth collecting / documenting a position on that sort of thing, maybe even providing some sample material for personal site FAQs rejecting such solicitations
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[tantek] I see such emails as a "trap" that especially folks new to having their own sites might be tempted by, and it could be helpful for more experienced folks to document that this "trap" exists and why & how to avoid it
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[snarfed] tantek++
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Loqi tantek has 11 karma in this channel over the last year (51 in all channels)
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[tantek] Interesting, I just searched for that sentence (unquoted) in both DDG and GWS and neither showed anything warning people about it. GWS showed a bunch of generic blogging/marketing articles that seemed irrelevant, and DDG had that and a couple of results about writing such "feature articles", one about pitching them to newspapers.
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[tantek] nothing about pitching to personal sites / blogs or warnings thereabout
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angelo sounds like standard "influencer" practice, no?
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[jgmac1106] tantek go read Alan Levine's posts on these messsages
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[jgmac1106] we get inundated with them as "edtech bloggers"
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[jgmac1106] https://cogdogblog.com/2018/09/miss-the-stop-sign/
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[jgmac1106] he keeps a cockroach page on his blog for these folks: https://cogdogblog.com/tag/cockroaches/
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[tantek] [jgmac1106] lol and I think these would be excellent resources to link to from the indieweb wiki
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[tantek] I wonder what to call this phenomenon so that it is web-search discoverable
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[jgmac1106] let me ping cogdog
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[jgmac1106] it is tough too name
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[jgmac1106] it is an unsolicited email asking to guest write on your domain, written to make you feel like you have a network
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[tantek] something shorter than the full sentence requesting featured articles
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[jgmac1106] I know just putting it in words to think out
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[tantek] we should name the page(s) in such a way to make them discoverable, that's more important than being abstract/precise in meaning
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[jgmac1106] agree, just thinking through the work flow to come up with the name
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[tantek] alternatively if we come up with a catchy name for such an anti-pattern, we can name it and blog about it and get it out there in that manner
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[tantek] paid placement comes to mind
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[jgmac1106] https://www.hivedigital.com/2019/12/09/guest-post-emails/
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Loqi it is probable
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[jgmac1106] guest writer gets 4.1 million hits unsolicited guest blogger 160k
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[tantek] we could also create multiple pages, for each different variant, to make them easier for folks to discover and learn that they're part of a larger pattern of misbehaviors
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[jgmac1106] phishing?
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[tantek] nah phishing means something very precise (see Wikipedia)
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[jgmac1106] if they are all coming in by email? ...yeah but email is the attack vector
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[jgmac1106] but agree on wring
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[tantek] are there positive uses for those phrases? "guest writer", "guest blogger", "guest post", "guest article" or are they always euphemisms for paid marketing placements?
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[jgmac1106] unsolicitedguestpost would be the one practice, what others do you see
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[jgmac1106] guest blogger gets used all the time
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[tantek] as a positive?
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[jgmac1106] they are never paid
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[tantek] maybe we're talking about different variants
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[jgmac1106] yeah like when people go on vacation they have guest bloggers sit in
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[tantek] paid featured articles are definitely a thing (per the email I mentioned)
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[jgmac1106] good bloggers will allow guest bloggers on their site for practice and reach, it is the unsolicited part
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[tantek] maybe instead of payment, they try to use "show the breadth of your network" as incentive
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[jgmac1106] if you and I opened our emails and openm spam hunders and hundreds of these
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[tantek] it's the unsolicited part combined with a clear intent to market a specific other site, service, product which customers have to pay for (or sign-up for limited free trial etc.)
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[jgmac1106] or we could make the positive aritcle guest-blogger and then put a warning about unsolicited as subheading
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[tantek] yeah we should capture / prioritize the positive meaning, along with a list of things to look out for (red flags)
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[tantek] and that way folks can develop their own sense of skepticism
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[jgmac1106] and in world of edubloggers, we kind of use it as leadership development tool, I will start a stub after cooking kids dinner
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[tantek] allowing guest blogging as a form of leadership development?
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[tantek] what is a guest blog
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Loqi It looks like we don't have a page for "guest blog" yet. Would you like to create it? (Or just say "guest blog is ____", a sentence describing the term)
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[tantek] is it the action (blogging), the result (blog post), or the person (blogger) ?
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[tantek] anyone here have experience with guest blog(gers|ging| posts) on their site?
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[jgmac1106] look at this: https://myblogguest.com/blog/
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[tantek] if we're going to define a positive, it would help to provide links to real world positive examples
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[jgmac1106] Guest blog is a practice of allowing another author to publish on your blog or website or publishing on someone else's website. This occurs when bloggers who post on a regular schedule have people write during vacations, to attract exposure, as a marketing tool, and as a leadership tool to develop younger bloggers.
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Loqi ok
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[jgmac1106] oops younger wrong word, newer better
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Murray[d] guest blogging seems to happen a fair amount on scicomm sites, though it's definitely reduced in frequency on the sites I read since podcasting became more common
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Murray[d] may not be related, but "guest weeks" also happen a fair bit across other mediums, like webcomics and YouTube
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Murray[d] relevant example of a guest post: https://twilightbeasts.org/2015/02/18/just-like-the-weather/
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Murray[d] and another https://planetfuraha.blogspot.com/2020/09/ballonts-viii-blue-sky-thinking-part-1.html
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Murray[d] (just in case useful)
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