Barriers to a more social IndieWeb

The source of online social norms

Where our expectations for online interactions come from

Recently Sara and I have been lobbing ideas around about social norms for communication within the indie web*. I think Sara is onto something about our individual contexts for perceiving Internet social norms. Each online community operates a bit differently, developing a unique culture of interaction and expectation. (I also wonder if age is a factor — whether the mores of the time people first interacted with the Internet influence their expectations for online exchanges?)

* In this article, I use IndieWeb to refer to the set of protocols enabling personal websites to interact, especially Webmentions, as well as the community of people active in working on and using them. When I use lowercase “indie web,” I’m referring more broadly to the entire realm of independently operated, largely personal websites beyond corporate silos. This post focuses chiefly on the impacts of IndieWeb tools, though social norms are relevant across the whole indie web.

Sara’s latest article makes clear that social norms are different between online communities, so I’m making the assumption that blogging needs a different set of social norms than are in play on social media sites like Twitter or Tumblr. While blogging has been around for twenty-odd years, I still think the social norms around blogs and personal websites are as yet unfixed. Simply writing and publishing in public faces emotional obstacles, never mind sending mentions from your website to another person’s — who you may or may not know. Communication between websites faces many of the same social challenges as social media silos do, but adds additional impediments with technical hurdles and design differences.

Developing social norms within a community

Is the indie web of personal websites enough of a community that it can develop and sustain shared norms, or are the shared tools of the IndieWeb and personal websites not enough to encourage shared patterns of behavior? Within the indie web, there are many interest groups that may be more powerfully connected and able to develop community norms than a shared indie web ideology alone could inspire — I’m thinking food bloggers, lifestyle bloggers, the artist community, book bloggers (but then again how many of these communities remain blog-centric, and how many have moved to social media and newsletters 🤔). Does the indie web — or the IndieWeb — feel enough like a place to organically foster norms for interaction, or do we need to be deliberate in crafting them?

Need: indirect communication and community rely on trust

When social norms are unclear and tools don’t always do what we think they will, that can make a theoretically simple interaction feel fraught. We need to be able to trust our tools for interaction, because merely interacting with strangers online requires vulnerability. We need our tools to work reliably and predictably. When we aren’t sure what to expect or that our intentions will be clear, that weights our decision to comment or pass in favor of silence.

No one wants to be obnoxious — when I update a post that mentions other IndieWeb folks, do they get pinged each time? I sure hope not because I fix typos and tweak wording and add tags after posting all the time! But, I worry they might? 😅 (We tested this in reverse at Homebrew Website Club tonight — Pablo re-sent an updated Webmention from his site, which revised the comment content in my WordPress comments interface without notifying me. So at least on my end, I won’t notice if you update a Webmention you’ve sent me 😉)

I want to dig into some of the barriers to being more sociable between personal websites, which also could inhibit the creation of social norms.

Barrier: diverse design choices cause unpredictable display

Every indieweb site shows mentions differently

With so many IndieWeb implementations and platforms, there’s variability in how responses are displayed. This is part of the beauty of personal websites: everyone gets to choose their preference. Many in the IndieWeb display simple Webmentions (i.e. likes, bookmarks and mentions) as facepiles or even stacked images with a count, giving them less visibility than meatier responses. Weirdos like me who add commentary to a “like” are lost in that system — I’m not following what does seems to be a common indie web norm 😉 However, that design practice isn’t universal — some display all Webmentions and comments equally, while others display none at all. The diversity of expression in the indie web is fun and fantastic, but may make establishing consistent norms more challenging.

Today at Homebrew Website Club, we somehow spent an hour digging into comments on my site and how different ones get displayed (sorry / thanks guys!). David pointed out that I hadn’t updated to the most recent version of the Webmentions WordPress plugin; updating changed how some response types displayed. The change isn’t bad, it’s just an example of how design choices at the host site aren’t necessarily predictable to the sender of a Webmention. Difference in display is inherent to design on the internet — every visitor to a webpage sees a slightly different rendering based on their screen size and browser — but the difference in how replies render between sites could be confusing for people sending them.

A need for “nomention” links?

There could also be times when someone might want to link to a page or post without sending that site a Webmention — the equivalent of a nofollow link, but for mentions. Maybe it’s good that you can’t disable Webmentions individually, because it could discourage dunking 🤷‍♀️ I will admit I was embarrassed when I wrote a positive but slightly critical review for a several-year-old book and the author pinged me to thank me for writing it. I would have been nicer if I knew the author would read it 😅 (I didn’t actually send them a Webmention so I assume they had a Google Alert set up for the title, which, fair 😉). A reminder of the age-old lesson: if it’s on the internet, they’ll see it!

Display concerns from the sending side

Privacy and intended audience

Replies intended for one person are shared publicly in your feed (unless you know how to make them not be, which I don’t). This potentially creates the context collapse problem that social media suffers from, though it’s probably less pertinent in the indie web since not that many people follow feeds 🤷‍♀️ People may feel less comfortable making in-jokes or replying casually if they know their reply will be served up to a wider audience through their RSS feed than would see it as a native comment on a post. Potentially, this could be addressed by omitting replies from a feed, though that could also result in a net loss for interaction on replies people do want seen by a larger group.

Cluttering up your own feed

From a usability perspective, short replies might be disruptive within a feed of longer articles — the pace of sociability is often faster than the pace of writing longer form posts. Social interactions may be as simple as likes or brief replies, which could dilute the site’s feed and overemphasize the social aspect. (I have put a lot of thought into what I feel belongs on my site, and recognize that many of my concerns are rooted in identity and perception.) Some in the indie web have addressed this challenge by having separate feeds for articles and notes / everything else — which is probably a good solution if you know how to do it, which I don’t 😉

(The IndieWeb WordPress plugin does allow you to exclude post types from your main feed 👍, so I did exclude “reads,” but I left everything else in because I don’t know how to make a feed combining multiple post types. Further customization requires more technical expertise than I have, and I have other priorities for projects at the moment 🤷‍♀️)

This segues perfectly to the next barrier: technical expertise.

Barrier: technical hurdles cause uncertainty

A small community means many unique set-ups

Another challenge with IndieWeb communication is that sometimes the tools we are using don’t work the way we might expect. I’m still not sure what happens when I reply to a Webmention using the WordPress inbuilt comment system — I hope it sends a Webmention in reply, like I believe it sends an email to those who comment natively, but I’m not sure. (Hopefully people have seen my replies and didn’t think I blew them off 😅) The IndieWeb community is small and disparate enough that only one or two people may encounter certain scenarios for use of tools.

Self-hosting means self-troubleshooting

And sometimes the tools just don’t seem to work, and it’s unclear whether the problem is on my end or the sender’s, but I don’t really know how to troubleshoot it. (Though, shoutout, the updated WordPress plugin has a debugging tool for Webmentions!) For example, I mentioned a micro.blog comment in an article recently. It appears the author received a Webmention, because he wrote a reply on micro.blog — but I didn’t get a Webmention back, so I only saw it because I follow him there. I don’t think that’s expected behavior? I have gotten Webmentions from others on micro.blog hosted sites, so I’m guessing it could be a difference in technique or theme, or simply configuration. Another factor is probably my configuration of my microblog at a subdomain; he replied to me at the root domain, so I didn’t receive a notification on micro.blog either.

Making the indie web more social

I think it’s good for the IndieWeb to practice being more social through our websites so we can work out kinks in the system, whether real or perceived, social or technical. Just the act of posting replies and mentions encourages a social norm in favor of interaction and helps assuage discomfort around it — the more people who actively interact using their websites, the more others will be willing to try the same. The recent IndieWeb Carnival is a fun way to write in community, and a recent Galactic Homebrew Website Club spawned the upcoming Send a Friend a Webmention Day 😀 I enjoy that the IndieWeb has realtime events to talk directly with people, but also want to practice being more social through my site. It’s even more important to spread the link love around, with search such a poor means to find other independent websites.

Over on micro.blog, Jas caught my attention recently with the idea that blogging is one of the most social ways to connect online because it allows for deeper thinking and sharing than the quick patter of social media. I also liked Simone’s recent post on human connection, and how we can put in a bit of effort to seize opportunities for connection. Earlier in the year I exchanged emails with Laci about tracking reads on personal websites, and was delighted to get a follow-up this week so I could check out the new book webpage 👍 It makes me happy when others have reached out to me by email or webmention, so I want to pay closer attention to opportunities I have to do the same for others 😊

Syndicated to IndieWeb News