#indiewebcamp 2013-11-14

2013-11-14 UTC
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@dwhalen77
RT @peterarp: ❝Mesmerizing story w/universal appeal❞❝Triumphant & delightful❞❝ #mustread ❞ GOOD LIKE THIS http://www.amazon.com/Good-Like-This-Peter-Arpesella-ebook/dp/B00GBN7RDI/ref=la_B00D9F9HTS_1_1_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1384368856&sr=1-1 #IndieAuth…
(twitter.com/_/status/400788100042850304)
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KevinMarks_
"There’s a feed in the middle showing all your friends’ posts, and some other random stuff along the sides that no one has ever looked at" made me laugh aloud
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tantek
context?
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_6a68
KevinMarks_: that blog post made me laugh and laugh
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_6a68
but really, I didn't think it was fair to blame their troubles on the database
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KevinMarks_
it's interestingly the same mindset I got from dhh yesterday
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XgF
I think lots of people have ran to (Mongo|Redis) because RDBMS are hard (but powerful) and OODBMS are rare
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_6a68
sure, but if you don't foresee that you'll need to manage consistency and relations among denormalized data blobs inside your app, you are in for a world of hurt
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_6a68
regardless of which implementation of non-relational key-value store you pick
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_6a68
shrugs
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@kevinmarks
@dhh if document centric apps are important, why use an ORM based framework like rails that forces documents into sql tables?
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KevinMarks_
someone in Sarah Mei's comments pointed out that MapReduce is how you fix things in Mongo, which is one way of looking at it
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bret
what tileset is benwerd using?
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bret
Found it!
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tantek
kevinmarks, sounds like a patch to a problem approach
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KevinMarks_
well, mapreduce is a different way of thinking - you construct the DB you need from the unstructrued data you have
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bret
!tell tantek I heard back from harry halpin and he has since updated http://www.w3.org/2013/socialweb/report.html
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Loqi
Ok, I'll tell him that when I see him next
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Loqi
tantek: bret left you a message 42 minutes ago: I heard back from harry halpin and he has since updated http://www.w3.org/2013/socialweb/report.html
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tantek
bret very good!
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tantek
he still hasn't updated the photos yet
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tantek
we took so many more
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neuro`
Hi tantek.
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Jihaisse
thanks tantek for the idea
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jihais.se
edited /User:Jihais.se (+50) "/* Working on */"
(view diff)
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jihais.se
edited /WordPress (+97) "/* Essential IndieWeb plugins */"
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jihais.se
edited /WordPress-fr (+99) "/* Extensions IndieWeb essentielles */"
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Loqi
barnabywalters: tantek left you a message on 11/13 at 11:16am: very cool! looks like it's picking up the u-url u-uid no problem. However the dt-published and dt-updated is "2013-11-13T" missing the time from: <span class="dt-published published dt-updated updated"><time class="value">6:01</time> on <time class="value">2013-11-13</time></span> which should work per: http://microformats.org/wiki/value-dt-test-YYYY-MM-DD--HH-MM
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barnabywalters
tantek: indeed, turns out that was an undiscovered bug from ages ago, value-class time components with single-digit hours weren’t being matched correctly. fixed.
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waterpigs.co.uk
edited /User:Waterpigs.co.uk (-320) "Updated location, reduced noise"
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tantek
Jihaisse - well done!
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@BarnabyWalters
#indieweb goal: by 2014-01-01, no longer be using https://twitter.com/ to read+reply to my friends’ content. (http://waterpigs.co.uk/notes/4T3FSd/)
(twitter.com/_/status/401008278056235008)
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Jihaisse
barnabywalters: hey, I've juste send a webmention to you, and, it look strange on your blog
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barnabywalters
Jihaisse: I saw! yes it does look a bit weird,  I’m having a look at it npw
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barnabywalters
it’s due to the nested h-entry thing again
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Jihaisse
oh, ok, same bug again :)
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barnabywalters
did that get fixed? or does the wordpress plugin registry need to get updated or something?
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Jihaisse
It's in the SemPress theme
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Jihaisse
pfefferle get it fixed but didn't publish it yet
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barnabywalters
ah yeah that was it
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Jihaisse
if I remember correctrly
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tantek
I'm wondering if this bug is a sign of taking the wrong approach with existing wordpress blogs
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tantek
that is, since existing wordpress blogs already have hentry, why not just use that (or even enhance it with rel=author)
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tantek
instead of adding microformats2 markup
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tantek
point is, due to the backwards compat support in phpmf2, the existing class="hentry" element in WordPress posts should "just work" for comments, reply contexts etc.
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tantek
and if it's not, then why not fix it instead of adding even more markup for microformats2
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Jihaisse
I'm not sure, but I think that SemPress is a theme developped for mf2 support
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Jihaisse
all templates have been redefined
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tantek
Jihaisse - I understand - however it seems like a lot more work
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Jihaisse
oh, sure
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pfefferle
it is some work, but dealing with the current mf implementations is difficult too, because the always use hfeed for example...
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pfefferle
and there are a lot of other problems
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tantek
interesting - so is the current wordpress uf markup is too problematic to bother fixing?
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pfefferle
it uses hfeed for single-posts and there is no hook that let's you add some informations inside the hentry
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pfefferle
except with SemPress or a plugin we are currently working on https://github.com/pfefferle/wordpress-uf2
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pfefferle
but not out of the box
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tantek
pfefferle - so how did such problematic implementation make it into "core" and not get maintained?
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cweiske
probably because there were no users
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cweiske
that try to extract data using that markup
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pfefferle
the hfeed thing is not in the core, but it was part of a popular theme which everyone copied
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pfefferle
and because of what cweiske said
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tantek
hmm… search engines and sites like readability parse the hentry markup
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pfefferle
most developers stayed with it because of seo stuff... nothing more
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tantek
but even for that your markup has to be correct
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tantek
maybe there wasn't a tight enough feedback loop for people to notice?
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pfefferle
it is correct if you ignore the surrounding hfeed on the permalinks
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Jihaisse
pfefferle: and forking this popular theme ?
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Jihaisse
to make it right and then pull it
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pfefferle
Jihaisse that's too late... it is part of nearly every theme including the automattic ones
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Jihaisse
it's never too late ;)
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tantek
yeah!
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tantek
submit the patches - never know what will happen - maybe others will help fix it
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tantek
across all the themes
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Jihaisse
but yes, it will be harder to be accepted
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tantek
better to just fix it to be microformats2?
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pfefferle
for example
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pfefferle
it adds the hfeed to the page-container of every page
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Jihaisse
I'm not good at mf2, so I don't know if it's ok or not
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Jihaisse
but, I guess, that's not good
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tantek
pfefferle - the hfeed container itself should be harmless for any consuming clients looking for an hentry
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pfefferle
The best fix would be to return it via the body_class()
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pfefferle
only on overview pages so no themer had to add it by hand
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tantek
so how do you go about fixing things like that in WordPress?
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pfefferle
i remove it via regexp and hook into the body_class() filter
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pfefferle
that's possible via a plugin
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pfefferle
but I hadn't the time yet
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pfefferle
I can also try to submit that as a patch for the core
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pfefferle
tantek the most implementations use barnabywalters php-mf2 parser and check only on the highest level for h-entries... that is a problem
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pfefferle
i tried it without adding the fix to SemPress and my mentions doesn't work on most indieweb pages
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pfefferle
will add a page about wordpress-theming to the wiki if i have some spare time
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barnabywalters
personally I suspect that mf support built into wordpress is a bad thing — it should be added by hand into themes
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pfefferle
it is not completely integrated
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barnabywalters
whilst reader-building I have found plenty of wordpress blogs which have almost-complete hentries, or the shells of hentries
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pfefferle
it is a mix
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barnabywalters
but always missing things, most of the time probably due to people changing the theme without knowledge or awareness of mf classnames
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pfefferle
hentry is part of the core
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pfefferle
entry-title and entry-description not
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barnabywalters
pfefferle: and hentry is not very much use without those other classnames :)
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pfefferle
hfeed isn't part of the core too
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pfefferle
that's true ;)
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barnabywalters
so why on earth does wordpress have half-baked support for hentry?
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pfefferle
I don't know!
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Jihaisse
because !
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barnabywalters
there must be some history there
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Jihaisse
yeah, it started in 1789
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barnabywalters
Jihaisse: lol
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pfefferle
the history is, that there is only one method that returns class-names and it is for the post-container
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pfefferle
ok there are two
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pfefferle
there is also one for the body
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pfefferle
and it wouldn't be that bad if the returned the hfeed via this function
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pfefferle
but they don't so everyone hardcoded it into their html
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tantek
pfefferle - I'd say yes, try submitting as patch to core. We should at least incrementally cleanup WordPress as we can.
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tantek
barnabywalters - my guess is that changes were made to the core to split responsibility between it and themes and that may have been a mistake.
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pfefferle
but that would break every wordpress theme out there so I don't know if they would accept it... will try it anyways...
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tantek
pfefferle - how would it break them?
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pfefferle
if theme developers doesn't change their themes it would show up twice
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pfefferle
the one returned from the core and the hardcoded one
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pfefferle
the hfeed "bug" is not part of the core
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tantek
oh then I misunderstood
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pfefferle
everyone copies it from another theme without thinking
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pfefferle
it is hardcoded in their html
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aaronparecki.com
edited /Twitter (+197) "/* Challenges */"
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@ericnakagawa
@t hey tantek, are the micro formats like h-entry a valid place needing work/support? Am considering building validators for wp themes.
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tantek
perhaps he can help with the wordpress conundrums discussed this morning
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tantek
ah he left
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tantek
!tell pfefferle do you know Eric? https://twitter.com/ericnakagawa/status/370604732689027072 perhaps he can help with the wordpress conundrums discussed earlier (re: core vs themes etc.)
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Loqi
Ok, I'll tell them that when I see them next
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tantek
aaronpk interesting. I've written code specifically to address a few of those concerns but not made a big deal of it. It's in CASSIS, let me see if I can document it more explicitly.
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aaronpk
yea, but still involves wiring up an interface and javascript and figuring it all out
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tantek
well, sorta. my interface gives me the character count from the server - no JS
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tantek
anyway I have a CASSIS building block function you can use in PHP or JS for that.
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tantek
actually two
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tantek.com
edited /Twitter (+1270) "/* Challenges */ note CASSIS building block functions for enabling implementation of better UI"
(view diff)
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tantek
aaronpk, there you go - I think that even does more than what you asked for
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aaronpk
hah! wow
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tantek
I for one find the $note exactly fits $maxlen characters when retweeted functionality quite handy - and often hit that specific limit
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tantek
like craft my tweets to use 140 characters *when retweeted*
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tantek
yeah I figured these were tricky / useful enough functions to share as CASSIS building blocks for others to re-use server-or-client-side
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aaronpk
they are definitely tricky to get right
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tantek
I've done a lot of debugging of them for sure
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aaronpk
so the context of that quote was a conversation with dreeves of beeminder, they are currently publishing a feed of user-visible improvements to their app on twitter at https://twitter.com/beemuvi and would prefer to have that hosted on their own site
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tantek
and I value posting notes that are losslessly retweetable
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aaronpk
the challenge is making an interface that is at least as functional as twitter's
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tantek
indeed that *is* the challenge
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tantek
from an indieweb perspective in general
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tantek
for the full feature-set of twitter
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tantek
(not counting all the cheesy furniture blocks)
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aaronpk
and it's especially challenging when you're talking about taking time away from developing core product to set up an interface like that
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tantek
well for the indieweb, this kind of interface challenge *is* core
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aaronpk
a much shorter path for them is PESOS, continuing to publish on twitter and pulling down a copy of their tweets
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tantek
PESOS is always easier upfront, more vulnerable/fragile long term
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aaronpk
that's kind of a common theme in general... do the easy thing now and fix it later, or spend longer on it now?
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tantek
so that methodology fails because the "fix it later" starves due to distraction by too many "easy thing now"
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tantek
it's empty/hollow/unreliable reasoning/planning
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tantek
in practice
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@cassie917
Successfully facilitated over 350 data chats w. scholars at Carver today! #ownyourdata
(twitter.com/_/status/401115737953423361)
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tantek
has anyone implemented posting in the future on their indieweb site?
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tantek
(like the feature in WordPress, I think, to schedule future posts)
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tantek
I have some ideas around it that I've been meaning to explore
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snarfed
aaronpk, tantek: the common term for that is "urgent at the expense of the important"
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tantek
e.g. storing it in "future time" in my flat file structure, and then having my index/stream code only show posts that have been "published" in the "past"
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tantek
snarfed - good to know - that's probably worthy of documenting as an anti-pattern
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snarfed
eh yeah, maybe. it's obviously extremely broad, way bigger than indieweb or even tech in general
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tantek
snarfed, a little googling and I found this reference/description of the phenomenon: http://www.whitedovebooks.co.uk/2013/05/first-things-first/
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snarfed
known solutions are discipline, strong leadership decision making, clear prioritization processes (although getting those right is tricky, often can do more harm than good)
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tantek
does that align with what you meant?
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snarfed
basically prioritization and weighing the value of quick fixes vs long term investments
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tantek
ironically this is related to the "at some point" antipattern as well
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snarfed
and prioritization is hard in so many ways. 1) making real priority decisions in the presence of non-obvious tradeoffs, 2) getting consensus, 3) actually following through and working on highest priority stuff first
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tantek
premature generalization
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snarfed
most people underestimate the difficulty of #3
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snarfed
there's always tons of lower/medium priority stuff that's so tempting to do!
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snarfed
anyway. project management, whee
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tantek
snarfed - in a community context I allow some amount of others' "urgent" items to dictate what I work on (especially if I can answer quickly) figuring that when I later have something *important* and ask about it - the likelihood of reciprocation is greater.
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snarfed
totally. call that a community building tax
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tantek
the dynamics of prioritization are more complicated in a community context
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tantek
I look at it as more of an investment than tax
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snarfed
yes, good point, my bad
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snarfed
also, urgent vs important obviously isn't a dichotomy for solving any individual problem. you can do both.
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snarfed
it's only an antipattern when there are lots of things to do, and you're overdoing the urgent alternatives instead of the important/long term ones
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tantek
snarfed - right - that first URL of the two above showed a 2x2 matrix of urgent vs important
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tantek
with examples in each cell
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tantek
seemed like a good overview
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tantek.com
edited /antipatterns (+1559) "easy and urgent vs harder and important"
(view diff)
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tantek
thanks for the "common term" snarfed - that was the key to further understanding this phenomenon and then documenting it.
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tantek
hopefully this is a good reference for this question / issue in the future. http://indiewebcamp.com/antipatterns#easy_urgent_vs_harder_important
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tantek
aaronpk - do you have a system for posting to the future?
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aaronpk
I don't. I've never really felt the need to I guess
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aaronpk
I have a hard enough time writing stuff in the past :)
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tantek
sure that's fair. no itch to scratch ;)
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tantek
however the concept does have some specific uses/instances that you *do* care about, e.g. posting future trips
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tantek
or … future events
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aaronpk
yeah, I have both future events and future trips right now
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tantek
which are just special cases of future posts in general
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aaronpk
but I want both of them to be visible before their dates
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tantek
visible yes, but where
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aaronpk
yeah I'm not happy with the way they look right now, cause they are in reverse chronological order meaning the farthest future event is alwasy on top
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tantek
yeah - another challenge with future posts
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tantek
ok I have some ideas I bounced off of benwerd last night, I think I'll try coding something up as a way to explore them
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tantek
because it sounds like there isn't much other experience with such "future posts" - so time to get some
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