#dev 2023-01-18

2023-01-18 UTC
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@the_unswerving Bridgy #SocialMedia via http://twinybots.ch https://brid.gy/ (twitter.com/_/status/1612356721623564288)
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[chrisaldrich] Not directly IndieWeb related and I'm always leery of "manifestos", but this had an interesting kernel of an idea and some intriguing signers/developers behind it that some here may appreciate: https://linkingmanifesto.org/
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[chrisaldrich] Welcome [Jason_Tucker]! I've been swamped by work and the holidays, but we should catch up on some of your IndieWeb/Mastodon conversations from December.
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[TMichelleMoore] [tantek] For my WordPress give back project, I read the W3C Webmention spec. There are things I didn’t understand but that is ok. My question - How often are the specs updated? They seem a little dated. Will that be a goal of yours to encourage updates on some of the specs?
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GWG [TMichelleMoore]: Which specs? Webmention hasn't needed an update.
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[aciccarello] Isn't the W3C spec copy an older one? I thought there was a newer version on the IndieWeb wiki
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aaronpk indieauth has been updated since the w3c version but webmention hasn't
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[TMichelleMoore] As a person new to all of this @gwg, I wouldn’t know that. I would just see 2017 and think it’s 2023.
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GWG [TMichelleMoore]: We have a landing page.
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GWG But I agree. Although many good things are older than 5 years
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GWG For example, ActivityPub is blowing up. Last updated 2018 https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/
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GWG RSS was last updated 13 years ago.
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[aciccarello] Ah, sorry. Didn't mean to confusing things more with IndieAuth.
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GWG I get the point we should convey that it is actively used and stable though
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[chrisaldrich] There is a huge amount of hidden context with respect to how specs are written and evolve or what makes them good or bad (as specs, not morally). Watching and listening to the conversations here and at the microformts channel over the years has helped a lot.
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[TMichelleMoore] Totally agree things created long ago are still good. But also see the Socialwg was active from 2014 to 2018 and in my head think a lot of social sites “improved” (maybe :-)) since 2018.
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starrwulfe [tantek]: here's that error I was having trying to drop a webmention on your site the other day: https://telegraph.p3k.io/webmention/17z0BWGofkFphFyVSI/details
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[chrisaldrich] Hopefully with mature 'living' specs one prefers not to have big (breaking) changes, though perhaps more common are extensions that allow new potential functionality
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GWG I think Micropub is worthy of a few updates. I don't think webmention has had any issues.
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aaronpk the webmention spec itself is relatively simple, the interesting stuff happens in parsing the pages, and that stuff could use better documentation
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GWG aaronpk: But where would that best be documented?
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aaronpk the wiki for starters
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GWG I more meant which page
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[chrisaldrich] [TMichelleMoore] You might notice some talking about the adherence of projects/people to specs as well. Mastodon, as an example, goes outside of the ActivityPub spec sometimes, which can force other projects to veer outside of the lines as well. Or recently it's created the ability to migrate accounts from one thing to another which I don't think is in the spec. If you go back a few weeks you'll see in the logs here how manton
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[chrisaldrich] was trying to reverse engineer what they'd done to make it a possibility on micro.blog.
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[TMichelleMoore] Here is an example - https://www.iso.org/standard/62085.html. I was the Quality Management System (ISO 9001:2015) auditor for my previous company. When you look at that page, it says this regarding the 2015 standard “This standard was last reviewed and confirmed in 2021. Therefore this version remains current.”
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[chrisaldrich] Some specs will also have material put into them which no one uses in practice and thus could be cleaned up and have those portions removed.
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[chrisaldrich] What is architecture astronomy?
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Loqi architecture astronomy is the practice of analyzing problems, seeing patterns, and then generalizing to higher and higher level abstractions on top of those patterns to the point where the abstractions become so general, so vague, so detached from the original problems being analyzed, that they don't mean anything at all https://indieweb.org/architecture_astronomy
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[TMichelleMoore] [chrisaldrich] At the point where Mastodon went outside, was it time to review the specs and possibly extend? I don’t know. At this point I am surface level on all of this. And then if they are so abstracted that they don’t mean anything, is it time to retire a spec?
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[chrisaldrich] I don't recall the name of it, but I've heard that Christine Lemmer-Webber is already working on a new project that evolves what she learned from the ActivityPub process to create the next thing with potentially better/cleaner features. That might be worth peeking at if you're curious about watching something new evolve.
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[TMichelleMoore] That would definitely be interesting to see evolve [chrisaldrich] .
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[chrisaldrich] Unless they've got holes or are malicious, most don't get retired, they just fade away from misuse. You can still implement and use refback, pingback, and trackback, but why? RSS is an old spec that's still hanging on, but certainly has quit evolving.
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[chrisaldrich] What is JSONfeed?
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Loqi JSON Feed is a feed file in JSON format https://indieweb.org/jsonfeed
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[chrisaldrich] If you want to spelunk a bit JSON Feed was a relatively quick informal spec to form and become adopted, and there's lots of chat documentation here to show what happened. GWG can probably provide a good crash course on it.
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GWG I still maintain JSONFeed compatibility, but it never took off. It just doesn't cost me anything to leave it on
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GWG The biggest user is probably micro.blog
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[chrisaldrich] There are a number of feed readers that also use it...
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GWG Yes. You never know. It could still catch on
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[TMichelleMoore] [chrisaldrich] Does this (quoted text) indicate that the extensions on this page (https://indieweb.org/JSON_Feed) could possibly end up being an extensions to a W3C spec or maybe a new one? “Sponsorship of the spec by IndieWeb Community
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[TMichelleMoore] It has been proposed in late July 2020 by several people that the IndieWeb adopt/sponsor the JSON Feed spec as a community project for ongoing support/maintenance/guidance.”
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[chrisaldrich] GWG, I feel like it "caught on" and did so fairly quickly. The question potentially would be: who else would use it and for what purpose?
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GWG Well, there is definitely overlap with JF2 on the Indieweb side.
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[chrisaldrich] [TMichelleMoore] Possibly? The question again is what else might people or projects see doing with it?
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GWG [chrisaldrich]: Check the issue list. There are a few things
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[iambismark] Measurement of “catching on”: does anyone know of sites/services that only generate JSONFeed but not RSS? (Tbh I’ve considered it for my WIP CMS because who wants to deal with XML…)
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GWG Wonder why the jsonfeed site is down
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GWG https://github.com/manton/JSONFeed/issues
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[chrisaldrich] Some of the best specs are things which are easily and minimally defined which can be used as building blocks with other specs or ideas to increase their usages and implementations. This is part of why webmention is so useful, particularly in combination with microformats and parsing.
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GWG Yes, and that's why we don't have any large issues https://github.com/w3c/webmention/issues/
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[chrisaldrich] There are still quirky ideas hiding in some of the suggestions I made in https://alistapart.com/article/webmentions-enabling-better-communication-on-the-internet/ which still don't exist, but which could be fun/useful.
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GWG I think we only really have the redirect and retry questions, as well as caching we could discuss
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GWG If we wanted to update
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[TMichelleMoore] Thank you all for engaging me on my questions. I was just curious! 😊
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GWG I love a good discussion
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[TMichelleMoore] [aaronpk] What is parsing the pages?
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[TMichelleMoore] And which pages are you parsing?
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aaronpk oh i mean that webmention only defines the post request that notifies one site about an inbound link. but what we actually use webmention for is for example showing a comment on a post
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aaronpk the whole bit about parsing microformats and knowing what properties to look for to decide whether to show it as a comment or a like isn't part of webmention itself
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[snarfed] ^ this is a useful distinction for plumbing and development, but hopefully we limit it to that. in practice, imho the "webmentions" user-facing feature should and does include microformats and PTD. I worry that we've overdone the distinction in the past, which has led to end user confusion and harmful design decisions like the webmention/semantic linkbacks plugin split in Wordpress
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aaronpk i agree but at the same time the spec distinction is useful to allow each part to develop independently. but yes maybe the webmention spec should have been called something else, and "webmention" actually refers to the end to end flow
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aaronpk obligatory link to schmarty's blog post...
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aaronpk https://martymcgui.re/2020/07/15/what-we-talk-about-when-were-talking-about-webmentions/
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gRegor This topic makes me wonder if I should rename the Webmention plugin for ProcessWire to something like "Cross-Site Interactions"
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gRegor Not that I think it has more than a handful of users
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aaronpk the webmention spec could have been called something like webmention ping to better indicate that it is just the first step
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[snarfed] eh, once we're into specs, I think the distinction is fine, as long as we can context-switch between that definition and the different, all-encompassing one for end users
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[snarfed] 🤷
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[tantek] aaronpk, eh, I don't think everything has to be infinitely fine granularity (like IETF RFCs 🦆 ).
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[tantek] we did have some references (SHOULDs) and tests for parsing/recognizing microformats2 from Webmention sources in the Webmention spec
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[tantek] IMO that would be a good formal addition to a Webmention 1.1, reflecting implementation consensus and adoption
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[tantek] as in, if nearly every Webmention "ping" as you put it implementation is *also* parsing mf2 and "doing something consistent with it", then it makes sense to actually roll that into an update to Webmention because it reflects the evolving *reality* of expectations of what people mean when they say "Webmention"
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[tantek] there is no need to hang onto strict delineations from a specific point in time in the past
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[tantek] better to reflect implementation adoption realities
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[tantek] [snarfed]++ for connecting the dots. It's that kind of almost draconian "minimalism" that likely led to the unfortunate separation of / proliferation of multiple WordPress plugins which 99% of the time only make sense when you install them all together.
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Loqi [snarfed] has 64 karma in this channel over the last year (108 in all channels)
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[tantek] just as it's a bad extreme to "put everything in one monolithic spec" (as we've seen repeatedly), it's also a bad extreme to make specs that are so fine-grained that in typical use-cases they don't make sense on their own.
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aaronpk i guess that's true, maybe it's more important to the *process* of developing the specs than the final output itself
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[tantek] gRegor, I don't think you need to rename the Processwire plugin. It reflects the "common" usage of Webmention as a term. Rather than asking people to contort to some theoretical meaning from 6+ years ago, better to update the spec to reflect modern meanings & expectations.
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gRegor Well that's good, I can keep the ___ for ProcessWire naming scheme with WM and IA :D
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[tantek] aaronpk, you're right about this part: "spec distinction is useful to allow each part to develop independently", specifically *when* that "useful[ness]" is defined by user-feature usefulness, not spec-author usefulness (see also priority of constituencies)
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[tantek] also note that there's a big difference between a spec like Webmention evolving to become richer and normatively specify comments, likes, reposts as *expected* features of Webmention implementations, and keeping the microformats2 parsing spec separate so it can evolve independently, and keeping the mf2 vocabs for h-entry etc. separate so they can evolve separately — both while not breaking Webmention
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[tantek] [TMichelleMoore]++ for asking LOTS of good questions, and goodness sakes ISO9001 🙏 🙇‍♂️
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Loqi [TMichelleMoore] has 1 karma in this channel over the last year (7 in all channels)
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[tantek] starrwulfe re: that 500 error, that looks similar to what [snarfed] was seeing from Bridgy Fed
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[tantek] Regarding updating specs in general. It can be a challenge depending on the process for updating a particular spec, and where a spec is being "maintained".
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[tantek] starrwulfe, re: that 502 error, why are you using Webmention Endpoint https://fed.brid.gy/webmention to send *my site* a Webmention? That seems like a discovery error. I don't use Bridgy Fed to *receive* webmentions. I use webmention.io for that
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starrwulfe[m] Yeah, it should have gone directly to you; not sure what was seen to send that via Bridgy— it was ok a week ago
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[tantek] [snarfed] re: the whole article vs note posting to Mastodon/AP — so far I have gotten zero complaints about my LOOOONG notes in the 100DaysOfIndieWeb series on Mastodon, and one "how do I": https://mastodon.cloud/@swart/109708132345593328
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Loqi [preview] [Steve Wart] @tantek.com @roland how do you get such long posts? Is that a server customization, client, or both? Can it cause problems for other instances?
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[tantek] One thing I think helps is that my paragraphs are far smaller/shorter than the average "paragraph" in typical blog posts / articles which are much, uh, chunkier
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[tantek] maybe the new note writing tip is something like that. no paragraph longer than a tweet (uh, today's 280chars that is)
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[tantek] almost like Twitter/Masto has trained people to absorb text in small tweet/bite-sized chunks. by sticking to that chunking size in the paragraphs in your notes, people consume it just fine because the chunks match their stream reading expectations.
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gRegor starrwulfe[m], your original post https://starrwulfe.xyz/80-2/ has a syndication link to fed.brid.gy. Telegraph is finding Bridgy Fed's webmention endpoint and sending a WM, but that endpoint is only for federating posts and backfeeding responses from the fediverse. I think your site is using something else for AP, not Bridgy Fed, right?
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Loqi [preview] Remember the stitch work of scraper scripts and helper servers with phantom apps and users on my site 10 years ago?! All just to do half of what Bridgy is doing with just a few lines of code on my side now. 🌉🕺🏾
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@www_sesin_at New post from http://www.sesin.at (CVE-2017-20174 | bastianallgeier Kirby Webmentions Plugin injection) has been published on https://www.sesin.at/2023/01/18/cve-2017-20174-bastianallgeier-kirby-webmentions-plugin-injection/ (twitter.com/_/status/1615634856720867329)
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@WolfgangSesin New post from http://www.sesin.at (CVE-2017-20174 | bastianallgeier Kirby Webmentions Plugin injection) has been published on https://www.sesin.at/2023/01/18/cve-2017-20174-bastianallgeier-kirby-webmentions-plugin-injection/ (twitter.com/_/status/1615634854233706496)
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[TMichelleMoore] @starrwulfe[m] [Apologies in advance if you already gave this information about your webmentions issue.] Aren’t you using WordPress? If so what are you using on your site to enable webmention functionality? On mine I am using the Webmention plugin. I even setup a sandbox to confirm and it does site to site. And with the correct information I am also currently using Brid.gy to Twitter/Mastodon via Webmention successfully
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[TMichelleMoore] though I have to figure out formatting. Can you point me to the chat link for your Webmention issue?
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aaronpk hmm I just realized if they are starting to shut down third party twitter apps I should go make sure all my twitter reply contexts and such are stored locally before I have to do that manually
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aaronpk there's still some old posts that I didn't backfill after I wrote the code to automate fetching them
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[snarfed] Good idea. I was trying to think of how to prepare Bridgy, couldn't think of much
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aaronpk Pretty sure if I lose api access it will completely kill my motivation to use twitter
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[tantek] Same aaronpk
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[tantek] That would likely be the end of Twitter POSSE for me
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[tantek] BTW is anyone here using Kirby? See the above CVE
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[tantek] !tell Sebsel are you still maintaining the Kirby Webmention plug-in, or know who is? https://www.sesin.at/2023/01/18/cve-2017-20174-bastianallgeier-kirby-webmentions-plugin-injection/
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Loqi Ok, I'll tell them that when I see them next
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starrwulfe[m] <[TMichelleMoore]> "@starrwulfe[m] [Apologies in..." <- Same. Site to site works fine and mastodon GitHub and Reddit endpoints works well too. Twitter worked best up til a few days ago and started acting strangely.
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[snarfed] I wonder what it would take to get https://www.w3.org/ to accept webmentions 🤔
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[Jason_Tucker] ↩️ Good seeing you as well. I’m trying to remember which WordCamp OC we meet one another but I recall learning so much from that convo.
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[snarfed] on a related note congratulations [tantek] on being elected to the W3C advisory board! https://www.w3.org/blog/news/archives/9817
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Loqi [preview] [Coralie Mercier] The W3C Advisory Committee has elected the following people to fill four seats in a special election of the W3C Advisory Board: Qing An (Alibaba Group), Tantek Çelik (Mozilla Foundation), Elika J Etemad (W3C Invited Expert), Charles Nevile (ConsenSy...
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[tantek] Thanks [snarfed]! More work arguing with people on the internet 🙃
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[tantek] regarding getting presumably the W3C blog to accept Webmentions, good question. There's some shuffling of staff right now with the W3C transition to a legal entity so when that settles it'll be more clear who to ask for that and more likely they’ll have time to consider / do it
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[tantek] (pretty sure it's running WordPress)
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[Tim_Nolte] I thought the W3C moved to CraftCMS
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[tantek] 🤔
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[tantek] I mean View Source on that post permalink and: <meta name="generator" content="WordPress 6.1.1" />
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[Tim_Nolte] Oh, interesting maybe that effort never happened/completed. 🤔
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[tantek] It might still be "in progress" https://github.com/w3c/w3c-website-redesign-documentation
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Loqi [preview] [w3c] w3c-website-redesign-documentation: Project documentation for the 2020-21 W3C website redesign project
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[Tim_Nolte] Interesting that CraftCMS has a somewhat recent video about the work. https://craftcms.com/events/dot-all-2022/sessions/accessibility-takeaways-from-the-w3c-website-redesign
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[tantek] W3C (including staff) has been focused in 2022 on the transition to the legal entity so it wouldn't be surprising if that project was paused in the mean time
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[Tim_Nolte] Ah, that makes sense.
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[tantek] Also, W3C might use CraftCMS for its static pages but still keep WordPress for their blog(s)
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[Tim_Nolte] At my day job we have recently to take on a client that uses CraftCMS. So I'm sort of knee deep in it now. I come from a WordPress background though.
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[tantek] [snarfed] you know the official W3C Webmention spec "supports" receiving Webmentions right?
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[snarfed] funny, I do see that, yes
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aaronpk I think I dropped a webmention endpoint into my W3C specs 😎
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[TMichelleMoore] ↩️ Got it!
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