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Drafting #IndieWeb Principles for the Rest of Us
I woke this morning to see the weekly discussion of “What is #IndieWeb and what is not” flared up again last night. Eventually someone points to the principles page. Yet to the audience I serve these set of core ideals can chase folks away for being too technical. So I wanted to remix them to see if I get develop the same principles for a non-technical crowd.
I started by forking the original list and trying to make the language more inclusive. I did add one new principle about actively building for diversity as like all things tech #IndieWeb is too white and male.
This is just a starting point and this draft is not official #IndieWeb stuff. Just me having fun trying to help the community.
Current #IndieWeb Principles
- â Own your data.
- ???? Use visible data for humans first, machines second. See also DRY.
- ???? Make tools for yourself first, not for all of your friends or âeveryoneâ. If you design tools for some hypothetical user, they may not actually exist; if you make tools for yourself, you actually do exist. It’s extremely hard to fight Metcalfe’s law: you won’t be able to convince all your friends to join the independent web. By making something that satisfies your needs, and is backwards compatible for others, e.g. by practicing POSSE, you benefit immediately, without having to convince anyone else. If and when others join, you all benefit. This principle is also known as scratch your own itch (See also: The Cathedral & the Bazaar lesson #1).
- ???? Use what you make! AKA eat your own dogfood. Whatever you build you should actively use. If you aren’t depending on it, why should anybody else? We call that selfdogfooding. Personal use helps focus your efforts on building the indieweb around your needs and consistently solving immediate real world problems. selfdogfooding is also a form of “proof of work” to help focus on productive interactions.
- ???? Document your stuff. You’ve built a place to speak your mind, use it to document your processes, ideas, designs and code. At least document it for your future self.
- ???? your stuff! You don’t have to, of course, but if you like the existence of the indie web, making your code open source means other people can get on the indie web quicker and easier.
- ???? UX and design is more important than protocols, formats, data models, schema etc. We focus on UX first, and then as we figure that out we build/develop/subset the absolutely simplest, easiest, and most minimal protocols & formats sufficient to support that UX, and nothing more. AKA UX before plumbing.
- ???? Build platform agnostic platforms. The more your code is modular and composed of pieces you can swap out, the less dependent you are on a particular device, UI, templating language, API, backend language, storage model, database, platform. Modularity increases the chance that at least some of it can and will be re-used, improved, which you can then reincorporate. AKA building-blocks. AKA “small pieces loosely joined”.
- ???? Longevity. Build for the long web. If human society is able to preserve ancient papyrus, Victorian photographs and dinosaur bones, we should be able to build web technology that doesn’t require us to destroy everything we’ve done every few years in the name of progress.
- ⨠Plurality. With IndieWebCamp we’ve specifically chosen to encourage and embrace a diversity of approaches & implementations. This background makes the IndieWeb stronger and more resilient than any one (often monoculture) approach.
- ???? Have fun. Remember that GeoCities page you built back in the mid-90s? The one with the Java applets, garish green background and seventeen animated GIFs? It may have been ugly, badly coded and sucky, but it was fun, damnit. Keep the web weird and interesting.
Drafted Principles for the Rest Of us
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- â Own your data. Having a domain and website is the first step. Why should you give big social media companies rights to everything you make?
- ???? Learn a bit of HTML. Start off with a website “out of the box.” Everyone else did. but a major goal of the IndieWeb is to make sure people and not just machines can understand how your website works. The best way to do this is learn HTML over time
- ???? Use IndieWeb Tools A lot of good people make tools that allow to POSSE, Publish on your own site and syndicate elsewhere, It’s extremely hard to convince all your friends to join the independent web. By using our tools to making something that satisfies your needs you benefit immediately, without having to convince anyone else. If and when others join, you all benefit. This principle is also known as scratch your own itch (See also: The Cathedral & the Bazaar lesson #1).
- ???? Try first, ask second! AKA eat your own dogfood. Whatever you build you should actively try and use. We call that selfdogfooding. Personal use helps focus your efforts on building the indieweb around your needs and consistently solving immediate real world problems. This stuff is hard and the community is here to help but assistance is easier to provide when you first try to help yourself.
- ???? Learn Out Loud. Document your stuff. You’ve built a place to speak your mind, use it to document your processes, ideas, designs and code. As you start your IndieWeb journey. At least document it for your future self.
- ???? your stuff! You don’t have to, of course, but if you like the existence of the indie web, making your content open source means other people can benefit. Depending on how you licesne the work they can remix and reuse it. This makes the IndieWeb quicker and easier.
- ????Content is more important than design. Do not worry about building the perfect site. Just get your content out there. That is step one. Then think about the user experience and the design. Storyboard your website or draw protocols. Make sure you meet accessibility standards.
- ???? Create building blocks of your idenitity. As you build your site you will want to make sure you can move parts to other services. The more your website is composed of pieces you can swap out the easier it will be to switch websites hosts in the future.
- ???? Longevity. Build for the long web. If human society is able to preserve ancient papyrus, Victorian photographs and dinosaur bones, we should be able to build web technology that doesn’t require us to destroy everything we’ve done every few years in the name of progress. If you own your content you don’t lose it when social media shuts down.
- ⨠Plurality. With IndieWebCamp we’ve specifically chosen to encourage and embrace a diversity of approaches & implementations. This background makes the IndieWeb stronger and more resilient than any one (often monoculture) approach.
- Plan for Diversity Actively encourage people from under represented groups to the #IndieWeb. Learn to listen to other communities. Find out how they #IndieWeb can help and then invite others on the journey. Be careful in your language as we build communities. Words like “ninja” and “rockstar” may not resonate. 48 hackathons may not be open to all. If you plan #IndieWeb events think about childcare and low bandwidth communities.
- ???? Have fun. Before the rise of social media everyone’s websites were different. For example in the mid 90’s Remember that GeoCities pages may have, garish green background and seventeen animated GIFs? It may have been ugly, badly coded and sucky, but it was fun, damnit. No we all look the same. Keep the web weird and interesting.
- Featured Image credit: “community” flickr photo by LilySusie https://flickr.com/photos/lilysusie/2095648843 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license
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Comments
I really enjoyed this, Greg. I like how simple and approachable it sounds.
@aaronpk, I definitely think these should be looked at during the Leaders Summit. I think some modifications to the Principles similar to what Greg has written could be super beneficial.
Greg, this a nice idea and is useful in thinking about ‘citizenship‘. it would be interesting to map these ideas in some sort of matrix that then attempted to map out what this might mean for the different generations?