Normally I go into the office on Wednesdays but I had worked from home that morning. I took the bus (#5736) inbound to work in the afternoon, the last time I rode a bus. I setup a laptop on the podium in the main community room to show demos on the displays as usual.
Around 17:34 we kicked off our local Homebrew Website Club meetup with four of us which grew to seven before we took a photo. As usual we took turns
taking notes in IRC during the meetup as participants demonstrated their websites, something new they had gotten working, ideas being developed, or inspiring independent websites they’d found.
Can you see the joy (maybe with a little goofiness, a little seriousness) in our faces?
We wrapped up the meeting, and as usual a few (or in this case two) of us decided to grab a bite and keep chatting. I did not even consider the possibility that it would be the last time I would see my office for over a year (still haven’t been back), and left my desk upstairs in whatever condition it happened to be. I remember thinking I’d likely be back in a couple days.
We walked a few blocks to Super Duper Burgers on Mission near Spear. That would be the last time I went to that Super Duper Burgers. Glad I decided to indulge in a chocolate milkshake.
Afterwards Katherine and I went to the Embarcadero MUNI station and took the outbound MUNI N-Judah light rail. I distinctly remember noticing people were quieter than usual on the train. There was a palpable sense of increased anxiety.
Instinctually I felt compelled to put on my mask, despite only two cases of Covid having been reported in San Francisco (of course now we know that it was already spreading, especially by the asymptomatic, undetected in the community). Later that night the
total reported would be 6.
Yes I was carrying a mask in March of 2020. Since the previous 2+ years of seasonal fires and subsequent unpredictable days of unbreathable smoke in the Bay Area, I’ve traveled with a compact N-95 respirator in my backpack.
Side note: the CDC had yet to recommend that people wear masks. However I had been reading and watching enough global media to know that the accepted practice and recommendation in the East was quite different. It seemed people in Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong were already regularly wearing masks (including N95 respirators) in close public quarters such as transit. Since
SARS had hit those regions much harder
than the U.S. I figured they had learned from the experience and thus it made sense to follow their lead, not the CDC (which was already under pressure from a criminally incompetent neglectful administration to not scare people). Turned out my instinct (and analysis and conclusions based on watching & reading global behaviors) was more correct than the U.S. CDC at the time (they eventually got there).
Shortly after the train doors closed I donned my mask and checked the seals. The other useful advantage of a properly fitted N95 is that it won’t (shouldn’t) let in any funky public transit smells (perfume, patchouli, or worse), like none of it. No one blinked at seeing someone put on a mask.
We reached our disembarkation stop and stepped off. I put my mask away. We hugged and said our goodbyes. Didn’t think it would be the last time I’d ride MUNI light rail. Or hug a friend without a second thought.
“Life Happens” is an acknowledgement that there are numerous things that people experience in their actual physical lives that suddenly take higher priority than nearly anything else (like participation in volunteer-based communities), and those communities (like the IndieWeb) should acknowledge, accept, and be supportive of community members experiencing such events.
What Happens
What kind of events? Off the top of my head I came up with several that I’ve witnessed community members (including a few myself) experience, like:
getting married — not having experienced this myself, I can only imagine that for some folks it causes a priorities reset
having a child — from what I've seen this pretty much causes nearly everything else that isn’t essential to get dropped, acknowledging that there are many family shapes, without judgment of any
going through a bad breakup or divorce — the trauma, depression etc. experienced can make you want to not show up for anything, sometimes not even get out of bed
starting a new job — that takes up all your time, and/or polices what you can say online, or where you may participate
becoming an essential caregiver — caring for an aging, sick, or critically ill parent, family member, or other person
buying a house — often associated with a shift in focus of personal project time
(hat tip: Marty McGuire)
home repairs or renovations — similar to “new house” project time, or urgent repairs. This is one that I’ve been personally both “dealing with” and somewhat embracing since December 2019 (with maybe a few weeks off at times), due to an infrastructure failure the previous month, which turned into an inspired series of renovations
When these things happen, as a community, I feel we should respond with kindness, support, and understanding when someone steps back from community participation or projects. We should not shame or guilt them in any way, and ideally act in such a way that welcomes their return whenever they are able to do so.
Many projects (especially open source software) often talk about their
“bus factor” (or more positively worded “lottery factor”). However that framing focuses on the robustness of the project (or company) rather than those contributing to it. Right there in IndieWeb’s motto is an encouragement to reframe: be a “people-focused alternative to the corporate […]”.
The point of “life happens” is to decenter the corporation or project when it comes to such matters, and instead focus on the good of the people in the community. Resiliency of humanity over resiliency of any particular project or organization.
Adopting such values and practices explicitly is more robust than depending on accidental good faith or informal cultural support. Such emotional care should be the clearly written default, rather than something everyone has to notice and figure out on their own. I want to encourage more mutual care-taking as a form of community-based resiliency, and make it less work for folks experiencing “life happens” moments. Through such care, I believe you get actually sustainable community resiliency, without having to sacrifice or burn people out.
Acknowledging Life Happens And You Should Take Care
It’s important to communicate to community members, and especially new community members that a community believes in mutual care-taking. That yes, if and when “life happens” to you that:
we want you to take care of what you need to take care of
you are encouraged to prioritize those things most important to you, and that the community will not judge or shame you in any way
you should not feel guilty about being absent, or abruptly having to stop participating
it is ok to ask for help in the community with any of your community projects or areas of participation, no matter what size or importance
the community will be here for you when you’re able to and want to return
It’s an incomplete & imperfect list, yet hopefully captures the values and general feeling of support. More suggestions welcome.
How to Help
Similarly, if you notice someone active in the community is missing, if you feel you know them well enough, you’re encouraged to reach out and unobtrusively check on them, and ask (within your capacity) if there’s anything you can do to help out with any community projects or areas of participation.
Thanks to
Chris Aldrich
for expanding upon
How to help and encouraging folks to Keep in mind that on top of these life changes and stresses, the need to make changes to social activities (like decreasing or ceasing participation in the IndieWeb community) can be an added additional compounding stress on top of the others. Our goal should be to mitigate this additional stress as much as possible.
How to Repair
Absence(s) from the community can result in shared resources or projects falling behind or breaking. It’s important to provide guidance to the community with how to help repair such things, especially in a caring way without any shame or guilt. Speaking to a second person voice:
You might notice that one or more projects, wiki pages, or sections appear to be abandoned or in disrepair. This could be for any number of reasons, so it’s best to ask about it in a
discussion
channel to see if anyone knows what’s going on. If it appears someone is missing (for any reason), you may do kind and respectful repairs on related pages
(wikifying),
in a manner that attempts to minimize or avoid any guilt or shame, and ideally makes it clear they are welcome back any time.
If you come across an
IndieWeb Examples section on a page where the links either don’t work (404, broken in some other way, or support appears to have been dropped), move that specific IndieWeb Example to a “Past Examples” section, and fix the links with Internet Archive versions, perhaps at a point in time of when the links were published (e.g. permalinks with dates in their paths), or by viewing history on the wiki page and determining when the broken links were added.
Encouraging More Communities To Be Supportive When Life Happens
When I shared these thoughts with the IndieWeb chat and wiki a couple of weeks ago, no one knew of any other open (source, standards, etc.) communities that had such an explicit “Life Happens” statement or otherwise explicitly captured such a sentiment.
My hope is that the IndieWeb community can set a good example here for making a community more humane and caring (rather than the “just work harder” capitalist default, or quiet unemotional detached neglect of an abandoned GitHub repo).
That being said, we’re definitely interested in knowing about other intentional creative communities with any similar explicit sentiments or statements of community care, especially those that acknowledge that members of a community may experience things which are more important to them than their participation in that community, and being supportive of that.
This blog post is a snapshot in time and my own expression, most of which is shared freely on the IndieWeb wiki.
If this kind of statement resonates with you and your communities, you’re encouraged to write one of your own, borrowing freely from the latest (and CC0 licensed) version on the wiki: life happens. Attribution optional. Either way, let us know, as it would be great to collect other examples of communities with explicit “life happens” statements.
#trailTuesdayThrowback to Saturday’s first Marin #trailRun of the year, masked & distanced on a beautiful #Junuary day. Chilly in Tennessee Valley as the sun crested the hills, poking through the eucalyptus[2]. After ascending Fox trail[3], it was warmer than any winter’s day. Nice breeze running down Coastal Fire Road[1 📷 @BryanTing] to Muir beach.
We took Redwood Creek to Miwok into the cool forest canopy, paused for a moment[4], then continued on our way.[5 📷 @BryanTing]
Seven years ago today I showed up to my first #hillsforbreakfast workout @Nov_Project_SF and ran up & down a few blocks for 25min[8]. In memory of #NPSF hills I ran to Twin Peaks today[1], 25min (or a bit less) of all uphill just to start — something that was beyond my reach back then.
Starting at Oak Street I caught a sign in a window[2] I hadn’t seen before, encouraging folks to: * see black women * hear black women * trust black women * love black women * protect black women * pay black women
After running up Ashbury to Clayton to Twin Peaks Boulevard and climbing to the summit & both peaks, I turned around to see a clear view of Sutro Tower, Mt Tam, and the Golden Gate Bridge from the South Peak[3]. On the return run, I spotted a pair of apparent princesses in pink dresses strolling along, brightly lit by the brilliant setting sun[4], along the adjacent road blocked to motor traffic. As I climbed the North Peak, I saw them again up ahead, strolling in the middle of the road without a care in the world[5].
Reaching the top of the North Peak, I noticed Market Street’s streetlamps had been lit, the sunset barely lighting up a few blocks of downtown[6]. Made it back to the Twin Peaks Summit as the sun dropped toward the Pacific Ocean, bathing everything nearby in orange light[7].
Ran down the hill at an easy pace, legs & feet tired after yesterday’s longer run. Grateful for regular runs up Twin Peaks, where 25 minutes is the start, rather than the whole workout.
🗓 More than half way through #January 2021. Since last month’s calendar post: Electoral college results finalized in the middle of the night[1] despite a violent insurrection[2]. Millions received their first vaccine doses, though new cases grew by many millions more[3].
And yet, Georgia’s Senate seats flipped, and with them the US Senate. 3 days til our next president snaps his fingers with executive orders, undoing damage or putting a stop to bad ideas, like the Keystone XL pipeline[4].
Finally, as of this morning, 2021-01-17, we’ve entered the future of Johnny Mnemonic (1995)[5], as noted by a wake-up call in its opening scene[6]. Time to pop in that USB stick and view it in today’s contexts.
For completeness (and those clicking through POSSE copy original post links), Hacker News permalink that does not depend on JS to view: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25813836
⭕🏃🏻♂️ Last track workout of the year and third #trackTuesday in a row. Spotted new #streetArt #heart by @kate_tova(1) a block before #Kezar. Blue sky and a dry track this morning(2,3) for a warmup, 6x progressively faster 400s with a 200walk+200jog in between. Cooldown jog/walk in the area, noting a #BlackLivesMatter sign in a window(4) & BLM stencil artwork on a plywood covering(5).
Last week the rain had left the track quite wet(6), glistening in the low sun(7), lanes in the shade still wet(8) from rain the night before. Completed a “broken 600s” workout: several sets of alternating fast and slow 400 200 200 400. On my cooldown jog back I spotted a BLACK LIVES MATTER sign leaning against lavender siding, behind a few potted plants(9).
Happy to finish 2020 with a return to regular track workouts, and looking forward to continuing them in the new year.
⛰ Tam summit #13 of 2020. Started(1) just before Emma & Olivia’s time trial. Barely made it up the first road before Nick caught up leading the speed train with Paddy bringing up the caboose(2). #BlackLivesMatter signs are present in many of the yards(3) on roads up to Tam.
Part way up #Temelpa #trail *someone(s)* had decorated a fir tree with holiday ornaments!(4). The views from the summit were the haziest I’d ever seen, SF(5) and Mount Diablo(6) barely visible. Despite the haze and cold (42F), it was one of my quicker recent ascents(7). On the way down I checked PurpleAir and the AQI was 100+(8) which would normally make it too hard to run. Perhaps the trees & bushes filtered the air along the trail. I could smell wood burning stoves & fireplaces as I ran back down the road to Mill Valley. Finished my 9th Tam ascent & descent on the same steep route (AKA H.A.M. on Tam) and returned to the Mill Valley depot where I started.
Congrats @emmakayemccune on a new Tam Ascent Course Record! And Olivia on a new PR! Well done you two!
🗓 Winter solstice, #December 2020. Took a break from posting photos since June. Sat with a lot. Listened. Focused inward, on essentials, on sheltering, and being sustainably supportive of others.
This month feels different. The U.S. Electoral college voted, shifting a critical mass of support for moving forward with election results. The Pfizer vaccine shipped and first doses have been administered.
Daily cases & tragedies continue, nearly ignored by the U.S. government, cruel obstructions of aid for months, only recently offering up mere crumbs for those in need.
As individuals there’s only so much we can do by ourselves. What we can do we should, putting on our own masks, filling our own cups so we’re not pouring from emptiness. 2020 has laid bare layers of challenges, individual entitlement & irresponsibility, masses succumbing to misinformation, systemic biases against those least privileged, racist idolatory of a narcissistic president.
And yet there’s bits of hope. 15 days until the chance of flipping Georgia’s Senate seats. 30 days until our next president can snap his fingers with day 1 executive orders to undo so much damage.
Balance work & joy while staying safe friends. Take care of yourselves, your loved ones, and let’s make it to 2021.
One year & one week ago, I finished my first #ultramarathon race @theNorthFaceECS #ECSCA 50k (actually 53km), my second-to-last race before everything was canceled (last: #TNFECS #halfmarathon the next day).
As a place for bringing together interested and concerned parties about browser engine diversity and standards, this repo would be useful for considering web standards in general beyond W3C, and the impact upon them by the participation (or lack thereof) of one or more browser engine implementations. How different orgs (IETF, WHATWG, TC39, etc.) approach these challenges and questions may help provide common approaches worth considering.
While the origin of this repo is from a W3C TPAC session, it was clear from the broad and diverse participation in that session that this is an area that goes beyond W3C, and thus we should consider expanding the README accordingly, noting browser engine diversity issues and opportunities across multiple standards organizations, and leave the W3C-specific parts as part of the origin (but not any restriction in scope) of this repo. If this general approach is non-controversial, I can make pull requests to update the README accordingly for specifics.
↳ In reply to @dens’s tweet@dens I remember 2009, when our worst complaints about #socialmedia were too many failwhales.
Congrats on Marsbot for AirPods! Could you allow sign-in with @Foursquare (OAuth) instead of a phone number for those of us without one or avoiding SIMjacking?
High level feedback on Canvas Formatted Text: Please harmonize this work with the
CSS Houdini effort.
In addition you may want to take a look at some of the prior work in:
SVG2 Chapter 11: Text.
Similar to
The Google WebID privacy threat model document,
the IndieAuth specification should have a brief non-normative
“Privacy Threat Model” or “Privacy Considerations” section, perhaps right after the
Security Considerations section, or alternatively as a separate document which the spec links to.
↳ In reply to issue 60 of GitHub project “w3process”This is not an “editorial mistake” from the perspective of those that carefully reviewed the Process document with the voting changes and in particular interpreted the only logical way that the election could be implemented given the text of the document (literally STV per seat for the number of seats in an election), and only approved the process accordingly. Several AC reps would have filed formal objections to the process had this been dropped before the Process went to review, and before that, in the AB.
The Process also doesn’t say, implement whatever voting experiments were run, so the excuses that have been made to justify running the subsequent elections as they have been run (“but the experiments!”) also hold no justification in the Process document.
Both of those are deemed objectionable enough to not remove this text from the Process and yes that leaves us at an impasse that the AB must take-up to resolve, especially towards a future where we may/will be relying even more on elected bodies to resolve conflicts rather than a BDFL “Director”.
As illustrated by the
2020-10-02 draft newsletter,
the Top Edited Wiki Pages includes User: pages which are more personal projects or bot updates and don't really add significant information to the This Week newsletter. User: pages should be omitted from the Top Edited Wiki Pages section.
The current
h-entry change control process
does not specify how to update the definition of a proposed feature, which means it falls back to being as strict as updating a stable feature which is more strict that desired for proposals. This issue is for considering a proposal for updating the definition of a proposed feature, as discussed during the
recent Microformats Issue Resolution pop-up.
Proposal: the definition of a proposed feature may be updated to be more consistent with one or more real world public web sites publishing and or consuming the feature, by citing URLs for those examples in an edit summary. New proposed property or value definitions may also be added for consideration per the existing requirements for adding a proposed feature. If you’re not sure whether to update an existing definition or add a new definition, try to work with the proposer(s) of an existing definition to come to a consensus to update it. Lacking consensus, add a new definition for consideration, retaining any previous definition(s).
This proposal also adds a convergence requirement for moving a feature from proposed to draft. If there are multiple definitions for a proposed feature, an issue must be opened to discuss how to converge the definitions by consensus agreement among those with real world public web sites publishing and or implementations consuming the feature.
This is a rough first draft, feel free to propose alternatives, simplifications, editorial suggestions.
Runair is awesome! Would be great to give an explicit open source license like CC0 (preferred), or BSD, MIT, Apache etc. of your preference and mention it in README.md.
For example, the IndieWeb newBase60py library uses CC0: https://github.com/indieweb/newBase60py and you could copy this LICENSE file in its entirety https://github.com/indieweb/newBase60py/blob/master/LICENSE
@slightlylate sorry for your and all of our collective loss. Saw him at #W3CTPAC 2019. He was kind & welcoming to new folks @W3C (@CSSWG etc.); appreciated his contributions & conversations 💔
This issue is not the place to make pitches for use-cases.
While we (Mozilla) are definitely sympathetic to use-cases that help users, a better place to capture those is either on your own blog with blog posts, or perhaps as pull-requests to add them to the respective Explainer, e.g. in this case:
Better yet both, so you can fully express the use-cases yourself and then cite them with a brief summary in the Explainer.
On the specific medical use-cases provided, if anything these are great examples both in terms of greater potential harm to users, and more vulnerable infrastructure due to systemic IT process issues. Those are both good reasons to expose fewer potentially risky features, not more.
↳ In reply to @slbedard’s tweet@slbedard or a Shazam for #birdsong, showing both which bird(s) and map of where heard, with optional contribution of location, naturally with @SwarmApp checkin integration for the obvious birds & bees mashup, and Twitter to tweet your #twitching 🐦🎶
On GitHub, project team members are able to add labels to your issues on a project. If your issue is a POSSE copy of an original post on your site, Bridgy should backfeed these as "tag-of" responses to the original post. cc: @dshanske
This is similar to
issue #776
which is the same backfeed feature request but for Flickr.
This is also the “labeled” specific subfeature of
issue #833
which documents many more backfeed for GitHub requests.
And similar to
this comment on #811
(original post)
requesting Bridgy Publish untag-of support,
it’s worth considering Bridgy Backfeed untag-of support
(the “unlabeled” specific subfeature of #833),
so when someone removes a label from your issue, your original issue post is notified. However, the
brainstorming of how to markup untagging
is still ongoing, and thus may need to wait for more discussion before implementing.
There has been some past brainstorming about possible MIME types for the JSON resulting from a compliant microformats2 parsing implementation:
microformats2-mime-type.
It seems one in particular, application/mf2+json, has seen some adoption in the wild: https://indieweb.org/application/mf2+json.
Should we specify an explicit MIME type for the parsed JSON result of an mf2 parser? And if so, should we adopt application/mf2+json or some other alternative?
This feature is both a useful declarative presentational feature for web developers and one that formerly had a non-standard -moz prefixed value (-moz-hidden-unscrollable). Thus we should consider giving it an explicit status of "important".
* 17k+ #Berlin anti-mask/anti-vax protesters gathered without masks (#COVID19 surge coming) * "Day X" preppers infiltrate German state institutions (@kbennhold), like a real-life MCU Hydra * Ware State Prison riot * Murder Hornet trapped, <2 mo. to find their nest
Hey guys (yes, literally), and anyone in a position of power (management, leads) at Google, or any tech company, or any company, please read this thread by @EmilyKager:
2wks "virtual" @W3C F2Fs: Prev: MTW 06:00-09:30 @W3CAB, first as a returning AB member This: MT1-5p ThF7-11a @CSSWG Long Zoom/gMeet hrs, missed in-person time & break chats. Though I could reference 30yo typography books for ::first-letter issues, like The Elements of Typographic Style, and How to Spec Type.
We reject traditional "fast growth" capitalist narratives, and instead humbly encourage slow sustainable growth across numerous projects that interoperate with each other.
Longevity & dependability directly benefit the people participating, instead of shortterm excitement which typically only benefits investors (sometimes "serial" entrepreneurs).
Would love to chat more about these topics: https://chat.indieweb.org/ (There’s a Slack link there too to use Slack to join).
@solarpunk_girl still reflecting on https://twitter.com/solarpunk_girl/status/1261196542519672834, how to design modern multi-generational housing? E.g. with care-sharing & support as primary goals, and COVID persisting: create quarantine split levels/sections with separate BRs/BA. Healthy half could provide food etc. for those in quarantine. Would work both for traveler / suspected exposure quarantine (like many countries requiring 14 days), and confirmed cases recuperating. If there were both (suspected and confirmed cases), they would need to be split apart as well, both sections accessible for care-providing without intersecting the other. We need new architectures of local sustainable support for a post-pandemic world.
A month ago @moral_imagining, @solarpunk_girl asked us to write a #MoralImaginations continuation to The Impossible Train story.
* * *
Since the train stopped, we’ve seen so many odd, shocking, and inspiring things.
People outside their train cars protesting to be let back on to enjoy their window views and demanding their familiar entitlements served by others.
Tensions outside the train bringing rise to new & familiar tragedies, now more visible to all.
A pair of humans board a shiny new train to the sky, launch, and arrive at the sky station to much applause.
People from different train cars, witnessing tragedy on tragedy, declaring enough, band together in solidarity, confronting and witnessing more tragedies.
Reports arrive that despite the apparent stoppage, the train is still moving, slowly, and the upcoming cliff, still crumbling away.
Per DAS charter feedback:
Mozilla has significant concerns about the inclusion of the
Network Information API in the charter (as a specification to potentially
adopt from the WICG) — Mozilla's public position is that this API is
"harmful" to the Web as the information that it provides is unreliable and,
at the same time, open to privacy abuses. As we have
stated publicly,
we believe it is "better that sites use methods that dynamically adapt to
available bandwidth, as that is more accurate and likely to be applicable
in the moment". Or, alternatively, use newer declarative solutions, such as
"lazy loading" images and alike.
Per DAS charter feedback:
Where we already have an existing Web APIs, e.g., Orientation Sensor,
we would prefer the working group cease work on
those items and instead focus on evolving the existing specifications.
Per DAS charter feedback:
Where we already have an existing Web APIs, e.g., Geolocation Sensor,
we would prefer the working group cease work on
those items and instead focus on evolving the existing specifications.
As is
evident with the Geolocation API,
implementers have continued to
make significant privacy and security enhancements to existing APIs, and
those enhancements have made their way back to the W3C. As such, we feel
it's unnecessary to have duplicate specifications.
Per DAS charter feedback:
The Fold Angle specification should be
incubated in the WICG before it becomes a working group deliverable. For
Fold Angle, we'd also like to see closer collaboration and input from the
CSS WG on the design.
Having said that, we would be comfortable with having WICG incubated specs
being explicitly listed as charter work items that the working group could
adopt at a future date. However, we'd like to see them listed in a manner
similar to the
Web Apps WG Charter's section on WICG Specs (i.e.,
separated out of the main deliverables list for the working group).
Per DAS charter feedback:
We believe it would be prudent for the System WakeLock API to go through
the WICG process until it gets implementation commitment from at least a
second browser vendor.
Having said that, we would be comfortable with having WICG incubated specs
being explicitly listed as charter as work items the working group could
adopt at a future date. However, we'd like to see them listed in a manner
similar to the
Web Apps WG Charter's section on WICG Specs (i.e.,
separated out of the main deliverables list for the working group).
Per DAS charter feedback:
On the the grounds of privacy, and given a lack of implementer support, we
would like the Devices and Sensors Working Group to cease work on the Ambient light sensor API and see it published as a Working Group Note instead.
Per DAS charter feedback:
On the the grounds of privacy, and given a lack of implementer support, we
would like the Devices and Sensors Working Group to cease work on the Proximity sensor API and see it published as a Working Group Note instead.
Per DAS charter feedback:
On the the grounds of privacy, and given a lack of implementer support, we
would like the Devices and Sensors Working Group to cease work on the Battery API and see it published as a Working Group Note instead.
A week ago Saturday morning co-organizer
Chris Aldrich opened
IndieWebCamp West
and introduced the keynote speakers. After their inspiring talks he asked me to say a few words about changes we’re making in the IndieWeb community around organizing. This is an edited version of those words, rewritten for clarity and context. — Tantek
That was a change we deliberately made last year, announced at last year’s summit. It was well received, but it’s only one minor change.
Those of us that have organized and have been organizing our all-volunteer IndieWebCamps and other IndieWeb events have been thinking a lot about the events of the past few months, especially in the United States. We met the day before IndieWebCamp West and discussed our roles in the IndieWeb community and what can we do to to examine the structural barriers and systemic racism and or sexism that exists even in our own community. We have been asking, what can we do to explicitly dismantle those?
We have done a bunch of things. Rather, we as a community have improved things organically, in a distributed way, sharing with each other, rather than any explicit top-down directives. Some improvements are smaller, such as renaming things like whitelist & blacklist to allowlist & blocklist (though we had documented
blocklist since 2016, allowlist since this past January, and only added whitelist/blacklist as redirects afterwards).
Many of these changes have been part of larger quieter waves already happening in the technology and specifically open source and standards communities for quite some time. Waves of changes that are now much more glaringly obviously important to many more people than before. Choosing and changing terms to reinforce our intentions, not legacy systemic white supremacy.
Part of our role & responsibility as organizers (as anyone who has any power or authority, implied or explicit, in any organization or community), is to work to dismantle any aspect or institution or anything that contributes to white supremacy or to patriarchy, even in our own volunteer-based community.
We’re not going to get everything right. We’re going to make mistakes. An important part of the process is acknowledging when that happens, making corrections, and moving forward; keep listening and keep learning.
The most recent change we’ve made has to do with Organizers Meetups that we have been doing for several years, usually a half day logistics & community issues meeting the day before an IndieWebCamp. Or Organizers Summits a half day before our annual IndieWeb Summits; in 2019 that’s when we made that aforementioned update to our Code of Conduct to prioritize marginalized people’s safety.
Typically we have asked people to have some experience with organizing in order to participate in organizers meetups. Since the community actively helps anyone who wants to put in the work to become an organizer, and provides instructions, guidelines, and tips for successfully doing so, this seemed like a reasonable requirement. It also kept organizers meetups very focused on both pragmatic logistics, and dedicated time for continuous community improvement, learning from other events and our own IndieWebCamps, and improving future IndieWebCamps accordingly.
However, we must acknowledge that our community, like a lot of online, open communities, volunteer communities, unfortunately reflects a very privileged demographic. If you look at the photos from Homebrew Website Clubs, they’re mostly white individuals, mostly male, mostly apparently cis. Mostly white cis males. This does not represent the users of the Web. For that matter, it does not represent the demographics of the society we're in.
One of our ideals, I believe, is to better reflect in the IndieWeb community, both the demographic of everyone that uses the Web, and ideally, everyone in society.
While we don't expect to solve all the problems of the Web (or society) by ourselves, we believe we can take steps towards dismantling white supremacy and patriarchy where we encounter them.
One step we are taking, effective immediately, is making all of our organizers meetups forward-looking for those who want to organize a Homebrew Website Club or IndieWebCamp. We still suggest people have experience organizing. We also explicitly recognize that any kind of requirement of experience may serve to reinforce existing systemic biases that we have no interest in reinforcing.
We have
updated our Organizers page with a new statement of who should participate, our recognition of broader systemic inequalities, and an explicit:
… welcome to Organizers Meetups all individuals who identify as BIPOC, non-male, non-cis, or any marginalized identity, independent of any organizing experience.
This is one step. As organizers, we’re all open to listening, learning, and doing more work. That's something that we encourage everyone to adopt. We think this is an important aspect of maintaining a healthy community and frankly, just being the positive force that that we want the IndieWeb to be on the Web and hopefully for society as a whole.
If folks have questions, I or any other organizers are happy to answer them, either
in chat or privately, however anyone feels comfortable discussing these changes.
Currently meetable supports tag browsing pages like: https://events.indieweb.org/tag/hwc
However if you trim the last segment, you get a 404: https://events.indieweb.org/tag/ or https://events.indieweb.org/tag
Meetable should instead redirect those to: https://events.indieweb.org/tags
Additionally, Meetable should consider redirecting https://events.indieweb.org/tags/ with the trailing slash to https://events.indieweb.org/tags without the trailing slash instead of serving duplicate content at those two URLs.
GitHub pull requests accept reacji just like comments, issues, etc. But currently Bridgy seems to not recognize reacji in reply to a pull request review permalink like:
↳ In reply to Tantek’s note1776-07-04 Declaration of Ind. "life, liberty" [for white men only]^1. Via @aclu^2 1863-01-01 Emancipation Proclamation 1865-06-19 EP & Civil War end announced to TX enslaved 1865-12-06 13th amend
Why celebrate July 4 more than #Juneteenth when rights were declared for all, not only white men?
When I was last on the Advisory Board (AB), I asked W3C Management (W3M) to provide a report on diversity of W3C, and in 2018 gender & geographic barcharts over time were provided for the AB, TAG, and W3M:
For example, what percentage of the AB, TAG, and W3M are white?
As far as I know, these W3C leadership groups lack even a single Black individual.
How many (if any) are in the Advisory Committee as a whole?
If W3C truly represents the interests of world-wide web standards, it’s long past time to ask these and other uncomfortable questions about who holds positions of authority & power @W3C. We must have the courage to ask them, and keep asking them, and actively work to dismantle systemic biases.
↳ In reply to @solarpunk_girl’s tweet@solarpunk_girl really like this! Need to replace & move beyond violent metaphors for common activities. Working on a longer post on this.
