events/2024-05-27-hwc-writing

Homebrew Website Club 2024-05-27 - Writing Edition

Bonus Online Homebrew Website Club - Writing Edition was an IndieWeb meetup on Zoom held on 2024-05-27.

• Archived from: https://etherpad.indieweb.org/2024-05-27-writing

Participants

• Sara Jakša
• Tracy Durnell
• Nick Simson
• Joe Crawford
• pcarrier.com
• capjamesg
• jo

Notes

• posts vs pages
  • Joe Crawford is collating short old posts into pages
  • making lists of posts to combine -- can make it easier for readers to find old posts
    • Template:jamesg has archive pages that collect all posts on a topic
• feels like "cheating" to revise old posts aside from addendums / corrections
  • comparison with digital garden ethos of continually updating pages
  • affordance of online publishing versus print -- is possible to update online
  • Johnny Decimal is a means to organize your files so you can find them. A lot of writing is looking at research or notes collected over time: https://johnnydecimal.com/
  • I want to know what I wrote on this day and will not look at database or git history
• Scrivener: https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview - tool for fiction writing
• switching between pages and posts
  • Redirection plugin for WordPress - https://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/ Joe Crawford also recommends!
• ways to present older pieces:
  • James wrote a piece about https://jamesg.blog/2024/05/23/sharing-older-blog-posts/
  • favorite posts, greatest hits, start here
  • end of year round-ups, weekly round-ups
  • link to old posts in new posts
  • "previously" at bottom of post
• how do people feel about the appropriate number of links in a post?
  • linking style: links in endnotes or footnotes versus directly in the text / inline
  • SEO "best practices" versus personal linking style / preferences
  • links as desserts on top of a meal versus "pre-requisites" for understanding
• style guide for bloggers? do bloggers document their styles? do bloggers follow 'official' style guides?
  • style-guide
  • Joe Crawford mentioned remembering a style guide for blogging, it's possible I was thinking of "The Web Style Guide" (first edition 2002: https://www.webstyleguide.com/ )

"A style guide can be a great resource for establishing and supporting style guidelines. A resource like a style guide is particularly useful in a distributed content production environment, where multiple authors across the organization are contributing content to the site."

• • specifically considering embeds
  • Jamie Tanna: Blogumentation: https://www.jvt.me/posts/2017/06/25/blogumentation/
  • referring to sites by the author's name versus their website's name
  • including a description of how to link to you on your website -- "preferences"
    • interacts with author's goals for the site, who they are writing for
• changing opinions about what we want published on our sites
  • LLMs don't have the right of removal, unlike search enginges
  • possible to opt out of archive.org
  • Search Engine Hostility https://dead.garden/blog/search-engine-hostility.html not all of us want to be in search engines and find readers via search engines
  • how we feel about older content -- cringe at seeing past opinions we've changed
    • digital doesn't show its age unless it renders poorly
    • including automatic notes to call out older content
  • ex: name change of "dark patterns" --> "deceptive patterns"
  • shitposting -- ephemeral value
  • Joe Crawford knows that he can't shitpost out of some instinct that the web will remember and I can't disclaim responsibility for it
• how do we decide what's good enough quality to go on our blogs / websites?
  • having the vague impression of good enough
  • is it written for other people or for me
  • publish everything finished
  • publish what was written for me (it is cool if you like it or if you don't) - and I even wrote a comic about the Zappa quote I was thinking of https://artlung.com/blog/2020/02/02/zappa-comic/
  • whatever the feeling of compulsion to share is there
  • what I want to refer back to
  • depends on the length - longer have higher standard
  • purpose - like the short pieces, that can serve to continue the discussion, can be less polished
  • depends on the audience - like don't want to piss off people
  • the web is forgiving of minor mistakes (e.g. typos) -- people are largely reading for content
• who are we writing for? at what point in the writing process do we consider audience?
  • writing for ourselves by default
  • e.g. considering an international audience -- avoid local colloquialisms - down even to if I share a measurement - "I walked 3 miles" there are times where I've included the measurement in kilometers too.
  • don't assume the reader knows everything you do -- have an article be something that makes sense on its own
  • Joe Crawford: sometimes a post that's a bit like vaguebooking feels like the right thing to write when what Iwant to communicate is more intense than I can do justice too. From dictionary.com: "vaguebooking is the practice of making a post on social media, primarily Facebook, that is intentionally vague but highly personal and emotional"
  • considering an audience when choosing between topics -- might be more likely to write about what we think others will also be interested in
  • considering the balance of posts -- don't want to write about the same topic too much
• short posts and notes