Another interesting contrast^1 in the #IndieWeb community is that most of us have both:
* a domain name^2 — for posting our content, replies, likes etc.
* a chat-name^3 — for chatting in our discussion channels^4
Ideally, we would have a discussion system that “just” used our domain names as identities (IndieAuth^5 for Web sign-in^6) to chat with each other, but no such system exists (yet).
No we’re not going to all setup XMPP servers on our domains and attempt to hook them all up. Nearly no one wants to pay that admintax^7. Nor would XMPP let us “just” use our domain names. Like email, XMPP requires a separate “username”. Sure we could fake it like Bridgy Fed does for us with 'domain @ domain', but why would we work harder for a worse UX?
So instead of making things more complex than domains, we took the opposite approach, and based our chat on IRC, and our chat-names on plain nicknames.
Using a chat system like IRC lowered the barrier to participation in the IndieWeb community, so you could for example, ask about how to pick a domain name^2 instead of being stuck in an actual catch-22^1 of needing a domain name just to ask about a domain name.
By putting our chat archives on the web^8, we were able to reduce our chat system requirements, provide a simple minimal web app for brief chats, and bridge our IRC channels with multiple other chat systems, like Slack, Matrix, and even Discord^9. This has the significant advantage of much greater chat client choice for community members.
However, we did realize that our statements in the chat archives^8 could be more closely tied to our domain identities, including our personal icons^10. Rather than a complex system or new protocol, we just put our flat list of nicknames in templates with images & domains on the wiki^11.
Thus our chat archives, despite being based on IRC, show icons for people, and link their chat nicknames to their personal domain names, again striking a pragmatic balance.^1
The flexibility of using a wiki template allowed us to add personal time zones as well, to enable things like asking in chat, “what time is it for tantek”. This works well enough, except does not account for cross-time-zone travel, though you could update your chat-name entry if you wanted to while traveling.
Having all our chat-names in a single list^11 on a page like that revealed another interesting aspect: we have folks across all the timezones in the US & Europe, some in the Middle East, Australia, and most of Asia as well.
As a result, the IndieWeb chat channels have people awake and often discussing various topics 24 hours a day.
Drop by^8 and say hi, and be sure to have a look at our Code of Conduct.^12
This is day 24 of #100DaysOfIndieWeb #100Days
← Day 23: https://tantek.com/2023/027/t4/five-years-websub
→ Day 25: https://tantek.com/2023/029/t1/indieweb-beyond-blogging
^1 https://tantek.com/2023/026/t1/indieweb-priorities-balance
^2 https://tantek.com/2023/004/t1/choosing-domain-name-indieweb
^3 https://indieweb.org/chat-names
^4 https://indieweb.org/discuss
^5 https://indieweb.org/IndieAuth
^6 https://indieweb.org/Web_sign-in
^7 https://indieweb.org/admintax
^8 https://chat.indieweb.org/
^9 https://indieweb.org/discuss#Join_Discussions
^10 https://indieweb.org/icon
^11 https://indieweb.org/chat-names#Nicknames
^12 https://indieweb.org/code-of-conduct
Five years ago (Monday the 23rd) the @W3C Social Web Working Group published the WebSub Recommendation^1
The test suites https://websub.rocks/ for Publishers, Subscribers, and Hubs are still up & running, as are the vast majority of implementations documented in the implementation report.
My site supports the publishing side of WebSub via the Superfeedr Hub^2 and there are many more supporting sites^3.
Beyond publishing blog posts and realtime updates in social readers^4, there are additional WebSub use-cases such as real time #IndieWeb search^5 results, like Technorati except opt-in via WebSub subscriptions, and without any polling.
Such diverse use-cases are one of the benefits of building-block^6 standards^7 like WebSub.
If you create a new WebSub implementation, be sure to test it with the test suite^8 and add your results to the WebSub Implementation Reports repo^9.
Got questions about WebSub? Ask in https://chat.indieweb.org/dev
This is day 23 of #100DaysOfIndieWeb #100Days
← Day 22: https://tantek.com/2023/026/t1/indieweb-priorities-balance
→ Day 24: https://tantek.com/2023/027/t5/contrast-domain-chat-name
^1 https://www.w3.org/TR/2018/REC-websub-20180123/
^2 https://pubsubhubbub.superfeedr.com/
^3 https://indieweb.org/WebSub#IndieWeb_Examples
^4 https://indieweb.org/social_reader
^5 https://indieweb.org/IndieWeb_Search
^6 https://indieweb.org/building-blocks
^7 https://spec.indieweb.org/
^8 https://websub.rocks/
^9 https://websub.net/implementation-reports
https://bw3.dev/ (@0x3b0b) your reply mostly worked as intended!
I checked my webmention.io:
* 2 replies via Bridgy Fed and Bridgy (backfeed from Twitter), and
* 1 mention directly from your original post permalink.
Your #IndieWeb reply does have a u-in-reply-to link to a fed-brid-gy/r/ prefixed URL of my permalink, however the u-in-reply-to link directly to my site is linked to my previous post (look for "2023/018/t1" in your reply content’s markup) instead of the intended post!
Try updating that direct link to use the correct URL (my original post at top of thread), add some link text to it, and resend a webmention.
It’s ok to have multiple visible reply links (e.g. this reply has them, to your post & POSSE tweet reply, at the top.).
Lastly, when you link directly from IndieWeb site to IndieWeb site with your reply, there’s no need to also link via Bridgy Fed. The direct Webmention is sufficient.
@elizabethtai.com (@liztai@hachyderm.io) there are a bunch of current #webrings examples listed here: https://indieweb.org/webring#Examples
I’m on the #IndieWebRing: https://indieweb.org/indiewebring
Links to previous/next sites in the #webring are in the footer of my tantek.com home page.
@kodfabrik.se (@voxpelli@mastodon.social) thanks for the kind words!
It’s not without its trade-offs. Long term it seems correct to prioritize a simpler, consistent, continuous identity & permalinks, while incrementally adding interaction features as needed. For now, browsing & Bridgy Fed notifications instead of following feels freeing.
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