relevant to the IndieWeb wiki

From IndieWeb

Anything directly related to people with their own websites, such as technologies and services used, design and UX, formats and protocols, as well as events or podcasts with IndieWeb talks or content are relevant to the IndieWeb wiki.

Should this be on the wiki? is an FAQ for wikifying.

Want to start a page a new topic?

Examples

Here are some good examples of stuff to put on the wiki:

  • Directly IndieWeb related, especially directly to people in the community with their own sites:
    • IndieWeb supporting services — e.g. micro.blog or any content hosting service that allows you to bring your own domain, or web hosting services people are using or can use for their personal site
    • IndieWeb supporting software — people are using to setup/build/run/maintain/monitor their indieweb site, e.g. both installable software like Apache, or libraries to help build software
    • Events or podcasts that discuss the independent web or IndieWeb in particular, including events with only a single related talk; be sure to list the specific talk(s) on the page for the event
    • IndieWeb technologies — e.g. standards, formats, protocols
    • Other jargon representing technology used as part of an IndieWeb site
    • silos that have prior art (UX, design, formats, protocols) for things we want to rebuild independently, or for instructions for how to export your data, how to delete your account.
  • Indirectly IndieWeb related things, e.g. posts, projects, podcasts that seem IndieWeb-aligned but don't actually mention IndieWeb or personal websites explicitly are better discussed on a case-by-case basis, before creating a page.

If you are unsure, please join and ask in our #meta channel. If you prefer to ask the question off the record where it is not logged you can try the #chat channel (See discuss).

Intermediate

There are more challenging subjects that require a more nuanced judgment call as to whether they should be included on the IndieWeb wiki or not.

Warnings, anti-patterns, and guardrails

Sometimes the IndieWeb community learns by experience that certain topics are unproductive, time-wasting, or outright harmful to pursue, and thus we may document warnings about such subjects to help alert newcomers to the IndieWeb of areas to beware of. E.g.

There are a number of UX and sometimes web development approaches that may be common in other fields or communities that have been found to be unproductive, have a high admintax, or otherwise unsuitable to IndieWeb folks pursuing practical goals. These are explicitly documented as:

Lastly there are whole social-web related areas and sites which either allow or encourage harmful behaviors that violate the IndieWeb code-of-conduct or otherwise objectively harmful to people, the open web, or society & humanity in general. These sites are not given their own pages (to avoid showing up in web search results) but rather documented by listing them and linking to Wikipedia:

If you are relatively new to the IndieWeb community or if you have any doubt about whether such a negative topic should be documented on the IndieWeb wiki, please join and ask in our #meta channel before creating a page.

What should not go on the wiki

Q: If all that makes sense on the wiki, what does not make sense on the wiki?

A: There are so many things that do not need to be on the wiki that it's hard to list them all. Obviously aside from stuff like code-of-conduct violations, here are a few which we've seen added then decided were better removed, that seem to fall into the pattern of when someone is passionate about something totally not indieweb related, and wants to add it to the wiki.

  • Random stuff. In general, random things that lack an obvious IndieWeb connection are better left to Wikipedia, and using Wikipedia links rather than creating less useful stub pages on the IndieWeb wiki.
  • Technical terms. If a technical term does not have a direct obvious connection to the IndieWeb, no need for it to be documented here, instead, document it on Wikipedia.
  • Organizations. If an organization has no relation to anything IndieWeb it can be left out.
    • Exception: As noted above as silos, we are documenting any/all sites/services that anyone in the community has used (or even has friends that have used) that has announced or is threatening to shut down, or has especially has UX that is worth capturing for prior art research purposes when designing our own indieweb features.
  • Events. If an event has nothing to do with the indieweb, it does not need to be listed on the Events page.

Again, if you’re not sure, ask in chat. People will help you determine the relevancy of a topic, link to previous discussions in the logs, or point you to an existing page where the date are previously captured.

For all of these, consider instead adding them to Wikipedia (or expanding their articles there instead).

Brainstorming

Expand silos to social media in general

Proposal summary: Expand the silos point above to include social media in general, rather than having to figure out which specific IndieWeb use-cases are being met by any particular social media related page, edit, or terminology.

We already encourage documentation of:

Example change:

And as noted in dev chat: https://chat.indieweb.org/dev/2022-12-23#t1671759351324300 and continued in #meta: https://chat.indieweb.org/meta/2022-12-29#t1672338139653300

Tantek Çelik: aaronpk, re: "way more opinions about the UX and UI of social media apps now" well it's good thing we focused on UX first and protocols second [(principle 7)] in this community then isn't it? And we captured plenty of screenshots of UX variants across silos and IndieWeb projects on the wiki. We have the research & receipts.
There is no "social-media-pedia", indieweb.org is in effect the closest thing.
And we should not shy away from that

Aaron Parecki: good point!

…

Kevin Marks: I think that makes sense for our wiki, as the socialwg one is a lot less maintained. It might be worth bringing some of those entries that assess different sites over

Thoughts? (or suggestions to tweak the "Example change")

  • +1 Tantek Çelik per above and advantage: lowers the barrier to relevant contributions to the wiki by making it easier to figure out if/when to document silo or social media related things (i.e. just do it). It’s less labor (and subsequent impact on the community) to not require folks to figure out social media vs indieweb distinctions (which for those of us who care, can document on the wiki to help explain that too!)
  • +1 Aaron Parecki per above
  • +1 Kevin Marks per above
  • ... Add yourself here… (see this for more details) — and any additional reasoning for/neutral/against

Counter arguments:

  • not everything silo or social media is relevant to the IndieWeb
  • ...

Organizing


See Also

  • wikify
  • start a page
  • Before deleting a page because you can't figure out how it's IndieWeb relevant, please at least click on the "What links here" link the sidebar to see what pages link to it which may help explain its IndieWeb relevance, and then, instead of deleting the page, grow it (expand the definition etc.) to explicitly include the IndieWeb relevance that you discovered.
  • If there is an active IndieWeb example, IMO it's worth creating a separate stub page with a brief definition noting its IndieWeb relevance, and an IndieWeb Examples section at a minimum. — Tantek Çelik
Retrieved from "https://indieweb.org/wiki/index.php?title=relevant_to_the_IndieWeb_wiki&oldid=94526"