tantekAnnB - it's interesting, I don't actually believe in "colective defining" - I believe in distributed independent implementations organically converging
tantekAnnB - "ALLLLL" sounds a bit too PC, e.g. plenty of efforts that were mere re-attempts of previous failures that didn't really inform much if at all
tantekI like taking an evolutionary approach to considering ideas, if the ideas are worthy (fit) enough, someone will build it and make it work, if not, then perhaps the ideas need iteration
melvstertantek: not *all* the sem web folks rejected micro formats, myself rhiaro tommorris_ and others embraced microformats where they have been useful, I would say the converse is less common
tantekmelvster: initially there was total rejection, however you are right that fairly quickly (within a year of introduction), a few semweb folks found ways to interop - there was a lot of deliberate outreach to make that happen
melvstertantek: we discussed IG items on the call and how they relate to the WG ... e.g. user stories ... it would be nice to organize them ... the social architecture doc, we thought about finding common prerequisites to the user stories, and for the vocabs I think that's largely done already by james
tantekAnnB - formality means: 1. with enough precision for multiple implementers to independently write code following the prose in the spec. 2. have those implementations interop.
melvsterwhat we talked about on the IG call was some kind of social architecture that would facilitate many of the hidden assumptions in the user stories ... for example for users following each other etc. which comes up time and again ... we dont have any documentation for this so that could be a nice to have
AnnByes, we talked about some aspect of documenting various approaches... seeking a factual description, and describing the results .. if we can get away from the emotions of personal biases
tantekit's still hub-and-spoke, however I'm presuming that when we (in #social) talk "social architecture" we are implying *distributed* or even *federated* social architecture
AnnBFB is certainly a silo, not open, etc .. but you have to agree it's huge, vast, and has worked -- in it's own way -- across bazillion users and sites
tantekAnnB - and frankly, the fact that blogs / RSS / SemWeb etc. have all failed to learn from FB's UX is one of the major reasons none of them have built anything vaguely even potentially compeititive
tantekAnnB - in order to build something, you can't spend all your time thinking, you need to spend some time building. you have limited time to think, thus you must focus it on what is most productive to think about. focus = reject things that are less productive to think about.
tantekhowever when you hear someone come up with ideas over and over again, and never actually implement/build/ship something, you tend to treat it ias a "crying wolf" type situation
melvstertantek: facebook is indeed a silo, but that's a policy, ie same origin policy, for connections in its graph, the graph itself architecturally is a valid system, even if the policy isnt
melvstertantek: imho indieweb itself would be monoculture by that definition, according to the bespoke "you homepage is your identity" dictum, but you'd probably disagree on that ... everyone will have different definition of different terms, it's more constructive talk about what's common ... in the case of the user stories there's are common assumptions that underly them, I think it would be good to try and capture those
aaronpkthe key is the "one piece of software" part. if indieweb were saying "hey everybody install ___ on your website and we can all interoperate" then that is monoculture
melvsteryes people will have different definitions here, it's a hornets nest, diaspora will argue each instance is different, so will indie web ... from my POV it doesnt matter too much, what matters is interop
tantekmelvster: your assertion of different definitions is irrelevant here in a W3C context, as for example, W3C requires multiple interoperable implementations
melvstertantek: i see your point, just everyone has different anti patterns, I dont see much point going down that rabbit hole, I can see I see your point of view, but also respect others, that's about all
melvsterwhat should be distinguished is adoption ... ie HTTP and HTML are very well adopted, things like wordpress well adopted but not universal, things like diaspora relatively little adoption etc.
melvsterim not arguing against multiple implementations, I would like to see multiple implementations, what I'm saying is that each person has their own perspective on what is an anti pattern and what isnt
melvstertantek: then it's up to you to prove that every member of the WG and IG have the same anti patterns as you, and no others, in that event you would be correct, but I doubt you could do that
tantekforks of open source projects are kinda irrelevant from a deployment perspective, heck, even just the presence of open source projects are irrelevant from a deployment perspective given the poor adoption rates
melvsterwell if you can show they are all the same software, you'll have convinced me, until then it's just a dubious claim without evidence on a wiki page
aaronpkthat page also demonstrates the inherent monoculture aspect of diaspora, since it's written to show which versions of *the diaspora software* are running on various pods, rather than any sort of mention of protocol versions
tantekas far as how much does software have to fork / diverge for it to be considered different - that IS a difficult question and without specific ways to evaluate it, tends to be subjective (debated politically)
melvstertantek: 'same software running on servers run by different people' is the claim on the wiki page ... there's zero evidence for this linked from that page ... you cant compare that to climate change, where there is a lot of evidence its getting warmer, but people argue about the rate and effect
tantekaaronpk: I didn't catch the reasoning on the podupti link - could you add it and explain how it supports the assertion that Diaspora is a monoculture?
tantekadoption has shown to be important for social silos, however it has not yet shown to be (more) important to a social (distributed) web (than say, multiple implementations)
tantekadoption is also something that can be done incrementally generation by generation, secondarily to more important progress such as a plurality of inteorperable implementations. http://indiewebcamp.com/generations
tantekmay also trigger the human proclivity for premature excessive growth and subsequent failure (profitable at scale N, unprofitable at scale 10N - as happened with numerous sites/silos in the dotcom boom/bust, e.g. webvan etc.)
melvsteryes also true, i think we agree, adoption is one part, normally a plus, implementations are another, also a plus ... everyone will assign their own weightings to those
melvsterso my original point was that your use of the term 'monoculture' really just means 'similar software' ... there's room for interpretation in the defintion and what defines similar ... to me a mono culture is relevant to the extent that it enables people to work, e.g. by helping or hindering interop
tantekthere's been some brainstorming about how to do IRC via POSSE from your indieweb site, however I can't seem to find them. aaronpk may know where to look
tantekmelvster: it's more than just "similar software" - what makes a community a "monoculture" is the *assumption* of that community that everyone will use the same (nearly the same) software
melvsterit's still a niche tho and in the last 1-2 years is really getting killed by web based offerings, id guess that's a trend that will accelerate now some open source systems are available
melvstertantek: I get what you are saying, and if I were to make the call I could probably agree they are all running the 'same software' (words from your wiki) ... but I can also imagine others might not agree ... but Id say it doesnt matter much, because diaspora only interoperates with diaspora which for me is the real monoculture, until that changes ...
melvstermy point is that 'same software' even tho that's not defined, and if you take it literally clearly false, is a red herring ... what is more important is promoting interop
aaronpkwith that in mind, if a project like diaspora has 2000 forks, they are all the same implementation if the intent of the fork was to contribute back to the original
melvsteri could write the best spec in the world for users called 'john smith' and all the john smiths out there could run it ... it still would be a poor spec
tantekmelvster - I think we have different opinions on even the very assumption / framing of "great architecture" in the space of the "social web" or even just "web"
tantekWhereas I believe the more likely path to success (sustainable reliable interop) is through incremental adoption of modular building blocks, each of which is simple enough for solo webdevs to implement in < 24hrs.
tantekand frankly, started with incremental adoption of modular building blocks - HTML, HTTP, URL all did not require each other, and yet worked well together
tantekanyway different approaches - certainly different opinions as I have no way to provide a scientific explanation of preferring "incremental building blocks" over "great architecture"
melvstertantek: im a believer in incremental building blocks, so that's fine, but I *also* like great architecture, I dont agree it was accidental, I think it was well thought out
melvsterThe way the Web spread was a piece at a time. So you could take html without taking http. So the failure of NEXT was a lesson, don’t try to sell it all at one time. Sell each piece on its own merits. Never insist that everybody take all. They will take all the pieces once they see how it fits together.
tanteksure, I'd even say that all the failures subsequently (replacing web with semweb etc.) are a result of attempting "great architecture" at the cost of "each piece on its own merits"
melvsterbut there was an architecture and design around the whole thing, of which the web of documents was only the first phase, indeed the web itself was an incremental release, that's where our thinking is not aligned
melvster'The web is more a social creation than a technical one. I designed it for a social effect — to help people work together — and not as a technical toy. The ultimate goal of the Web is to support and improve our weblike existence in the world. We clump into families, associations, and companies. We develop trust across the miles and distrust around the corner.'
melvster'The web is more a social creation than a technical one. I designed it for a social effect — to help people work together — and not as a technical toy. The ultimate goal of the Web is to support and improve our weblike existence in the world. We clump into families, associations, and companies. We develop trust across the miles and distrust around the corner.'
KevinMarksthe otehr key thing about the early web work was that si was building on what went before - it had ways to connect to ftp, gopher, wais, email as part of the structure
melvsteryeah the layer cake is kind of a guide, i wouldnt take it too seriously, more try and grok the ideas behind it, such as using uris to connect things, that we still need
melvsterim not an academic so i cant tell you why ... its been sad that relatively few apps were built in the sem web ... as one of the few people that have tried it, ive been amazed, hopefully others will see this too as they see it with their own eyes, i just dont know why it took SO long
melvsteri think it depends on professor, ive noticed some places like liepzig and MIT are very productive, even with relatively few people, but you need people to get things done ... the best way to convince someone is to SHOW them
tantekmelvster: nah, spending 10 years largely building infrastructure (not apps) means you built the wrong infrastructure, since it wasn't designed app-first, user-first
tantekI think you'll find that as you actually try to build apps, there will be lots of things missing and just broken in your "infrastructure" that doesn't represent actual human / user needs
melvstertantek: ive spent the last 5 years building apps, because i need to use them, im just sad there's only a few people that do that, i self dogfood all the time, the *only* reason I use the semantic web is because it solves all the use cases other technologies cant
AnnB FYI, I'm on WebEx if anyone wants to talk about the social IG
tantek btw - lots of updates to https://indiewebcamp.com/post-type-discovery thanks to feedback and issues filed from folks! really appreciate it!
tommorris_ I'm neither in the Social WG or IG but I should note that I'm not an "XML" person. SemWeb tech is best without XML.
melvster tantek: we discussed IG items on the call and how they relate to the WG ... e.g. user stories ... it would be nice to organize them ... the social architecture doc, we thought about finding common prerequisites to the user stories, and for the vocabs I think that's largely done already by james
ben_thatmustbeme if the API is reasonable one would have expected other implementations to exist already
aaronpk also really? go look at https://wiki.diasporafoundation.org/Main_Page there's a link to "codebase"... *one* codebase
KevinMarks the otehr key thing about the early web work was that si was building on what went before - it had ways to connect to ftp, gopher, wais, email as part of the structure