dogfood
This article is a stub. You can help the IndieWeb wiki by expanding it.
dogfood in the context of the IndieWeb was used to refer the software practice of metaphorically “eating your own dog food” in particular with using your own creations on your own personal site that you depend on, day to day, however the IndieWeb community prefers to instead use the metaphor “eat what you cook” for this encouragement.
Since colloquial usage is a bit broader and (mis)biased toward a "a company [using] its own product", thereby implying people using work creations on work sites (rather than their own individual/personal sites), and not necessarily depending on them, it's helpful to have a more specific, more meaningful term to use in broader contexts:
Beginning in 2019, the community began actively eschewing the words dogfood and selfdogfooding for the more positive framing of the phrase "eat what you cook".
Eating what you cook is a metaphor for the the IndieWeb principle of use what you make.
Criticism
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food#Criticisms_and_support for starters.
Negative gender and cultural associations
Self-associating with "dog" is possibly particularly negatively gendered and offensive in some cultures.
- https://twitter.com/jgmac1106/status/1047117784109453313
- "After @Maha_Bali’s #IndieWeb NYC keynote good intentions & realities dropping words dogfooding and self-dogfooding from my vocab. 50% of the world’s population been fighting word “bitches.” Don’t want to use metaphor of dogs #unboundeq (http://jgregorymcverry.com/7603-2/)" @jgmac1106 October 2, 2018
- https://twitter.com/jgmac1106/status/1047118557333610497
- "I learned in @Maha_Bali’s talk that referring to someone as a dog in many Muslim cultures considered a major insult. I want #IndieWeb to expand beyond the global north and reach everywhere. Words matter. (http://jgregorymcverry.com/7605-2/)" @jgmac1106 October 2, 2018
Build what you need, use what you build: Scratch your own itch, by creating for yourself on your personal domain and iterating (the community calls this “selfdogfooding” which is a word I hate).Cathie Leblanc2019-03-24
- https://cjwillcock.ca/2019/08/06/against-selfdogfood-as-polite-nomenclature-for-principles/
- "A dog’s breakfast is a breakfast mistake. ... I seem to have a compatibility issue with the term."
Lingo
- http://kupad.net/blog/id/1487922467
In fact, there's a quite a lot of lingo. Some, like selfdogfooding is pretty terriblel
Articles
- 2013-01-03 Forrester: Product Management: Should You Eat Your Own Cooking?
I’d like to suggest we get away from the traditional “dog food” analogy, which has its own set of connotations (including some negative ones). Instead, let’s replace “dog food” with “your own cooking.”