Indieweb.xyz

Indieweb.xyz (archived) was a syndication service organized into subs until ~2023-02-26 at least, similar to Reddit, created by Kicks Condor.

All interaction with the site, such as linking and upvoting, was performed by Webmention. Discussion happens on blog posts themselves, as per Indieweb convention. For more, see:

• What is Indieweb.xyz? (Internet Archive link, original link https://indieweb.xyz/about is dead)

The domain appears to have been lost sometime after 2023-02-26. It's redirecting to an architecture firm in San Francisco as of 2023-10-19.

Rationale

The project was inspired by IndieNews, which syndicates essays and links relevant to the Indieweb. It acted like a planet, but one where anyone can participate. Indieweb.xyz opened the concept up to any topic. It's as if you can create ad-hoc planets for any topic or community.

Indieweb.xyz takes the approach that self-promotion of your blog is not bad, it's necessary in order to find an audience when you're starting out or tackling new subjects.

However, you could only submit a particular link to one sub on the entire site. If the same link is submitted to other subs, these are treated like "cross-posts" and are hidden by default on most subs.

How to Syndicate

1. Write an essay or a link out on your blog as an entry.
   (Your blog entry must be an h-entry.)
2. Add a link in that blog entry to the indieweb.xyz sub you want to post to.
   (That link must be marked as u-syndication.)
3. Publish the entry, sending Webmentions to the Indieweb.xyz sub.

For step two, here is a link template that you can copy into your blog entry to get started:

<p><em>This was also posted to
<a href="https://indieweb.xyz/en/hottubs" class="u-syndication">xyz:hottubs</a>.</em></p>

Simply replace the two occurrences of hottubs with the name of the sub you want to post to.

Full documentation on:

• Indieweb.xyz Howtos (Internet Archive link, original link https://indieweb.xyz/howto is dead)

Up-voting and Algorithms

On social media and other aggregators, algorithms for filtering content have helped push away raw spam from the user. However, this has given rise to clickbait, which games the algorithm and crowds out legitimate material. Up-voting also creates a "herding" effect where previous upvotes influence voters to continue upvoting the same link or comment, which is usually already at the top of the view.

While you can technically "up-vote" a link on Indieweb.xyz, these up-votes are not used to promote or filter links. There is no algorithm. Syndicated links are shown in order of most recent, just as on Twitter.

Special Subs

A few subs exist that are set aside for specific purposes:

• /en/hottubs (Internet Archive link, original link https://indieweb.xyz/en/hottubs died) was the testing sub. When the service was running, submitted links would not remain long there.

• /en/ask-xyz (Internet Archive link, original link https://indieweb.xyz/en/ask-xyz died) was a sub that can automatically get cross-posted to. If you submit a link to /en/programming with the title "Ask XYZ: How Do I Connect to SQLite3?" then the link was also cross-posted to /en/ask-xyz, because it starts with the phrase "Ask XYZ". Cross-posts are also not hidden on this sub.

• /en/show-xyz (Internet Archive link, original link https://indieweb.xyz/en/show-xyz died) worked identically, but the phrase starting the post's title should be "Show XYZ".

See Also

• planet