🧞♀️✨ The Real Godwin’s Law
Once a privately owned, centralized platform closes its public APIs, the platform will invariably lose any usablity except for people who publicly or privately admire Hitler.
Link tags: community
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CSS { In Real Life } | Thoughts From CSS Day
It’s clear that companies don’t value CSS skills in the same way as, say Javascript — which is reflected in pay disparity, bootcamp priorities, and the lack of visibility in job descriptions. It’s not uncommon to see front end job specifications listing React, Redux, Typescript and more, with barely a passing mention of HTML and CSS, despite being core web technologies. New developers are encouraged to learn just enough CSS to get by, rather than cultivate a deep knowledge and appreciation for the language, and that’s reflected in the messy, convoluted code, riddled with bad practices, that many of us have to clear up afterwards.
ongoing by Tim Bray · Bye, Twitter
I don’t like making unpaid contributions to a for-profit publisher whose proprietor is an alt-right troll.
Same.
I can see no good arguments for redirecting my voice into anyone else’s for-profit venture-funded algorithm-driven engagement-maximizing wet dream.
Fediverse
Despite growing pains and potential problems, I think this could be one of the most interesting movements on the web in recent years. Let’s see where it goes.
I’m getting the same vibe as Bastian about Mastodon:
Suddenly there was this old Twitter vibe. Real conversations. Real people. Interesting content. A feeling of a warm welcoming group. No algorithm to mess around with our timelines. No troll army to destory every tiny bit of peace. Yes, Mastodon is rough around the edges. Many parts are not intuitive. But this roughness somehow added to the positive experience for me.
This could really work!
@anildash@mastodon.cloud
When it came time to reckon with social media’s failings, nobody ran to the “web3” platforms. Nobody asked “can I get paid per message”? Nobody asked about the blockchain. The community of people who’ve been quietly doing this work for years (decades!) ended up being the ones who welcomed everyone over, as always.
Notes, links, etc | There’s water in the hedgerows
How do you keep knowledge alive over centuries? Stuff that seems big enough for a group of people to worry about at the time, but not so big it makes world news. Not the information that gets in all the textbooks, but just the stuff that makes the world gently tick over.
When shaken to the core, we get priorities right. Can we stick to it? – Dr. Carolina Odman
Carolina’s post reminds me of A Paradise Built In Hell by Rebecca Solnit:
In the face of disaster, survivors get together, make time and help one another regardless of their differences. It is beautiful and inspiring.
Grow the IndieWeb with Webmentions | Amber Wilson
Amber describes how she implemented webmentions on her (static) site. More important, she describes why!
Didn’t I Write This Story Already? When Your Fictional Pandemic Becomes Reality | Tor.com
Naomi Kritzer published a short story five years ago called So Much Cooking about a food blogger in lockdown during a pandemic. Prescient.
I left a lot of the details about the disease vague in the story, because what I wanted to talk about was not the science but the individuals struggling to get by as this crisis raged around them. There’s a common assumption that if the shit ever truly hit the fan, people would turn on one another like sharks turning on a wounded shark. In fact, the opposite usually happens: humans in disasters form tight community bonds, help their neighbors, offer what they can to the community.
Brighton Quarantine Delivery
Fellow Brightonians, here’s a handy one-stop shop for all the places doing deliveries right now, generated from this spreadsheet by Chris Boakes.
So no one told us the internet was gonna be this way | The Outline
An interview with Joanne McNeil about her new book, Lurking:
Someone who was creating, say, a small decentralized community for a specific group of people would not have luck finding investors, as opposed to Facebook, which sought to build a platform for all.
‘Sfunny, when I was on Quarantine Book Club the other day, this is exactly what I talked about one point—how Facebook (and venture capital) moved the goalposts on what constitutes success and failure on the web.
Overcoming my panic towards accessibility | Zell Liew
This is very open and honest. Thank you for writing it, Zell.
The People’s Web
Every day, millions of people rely on independent websites that are mostly created by regular people, weren’t designed as mobile apps, connect deeply to culture, and aren’t run by the giant tech companies. These are a vision of not just what the web once was, but what it can be again.
This really hits home for me. Anil could be describing The Session here:
They often start as a labor of love from one person, or one small, tightly-knit community. The knowledge or information set that they record is considered obscure or even worthless to outsiders, until it becomes so comprehensive that its collective worth is undeniable.
This is a very important message:
Taken together, these sites are as valuable as any of the giant platforms run by the tech titans.
The Accidental Side Project ◆ 24 ways
This gets me right in the feels.
I can’t believe I was lucky enough to contribute to 24 Ways seven times over its fifteen year lifespan!
The Server Souvenir: Taking Home Remnants of Virtual Worlds | Platypus
When the game developer Blizzard Entertainment decommissioned some of their server blades to be auctioned off, they turned them into commemorative commodities, adding an etching onto the metal frame with the server’s name (e.g., “Proudmoore” or “Darkspear”), its dates of operation, and an inscription: “within the circuits and hard drive, a world of magic, adventure, and friendship thrived… this server was home to thousands of immersive experiences.” While stripped of their ability to store virtual memory or connect people to an online game world, these servers were valuable and meaningful as worlds and homes. They became repositories of social and spatial memory, souvenirs from WoW.
2019 End-of-Year Thoughts Archives | CSS-Tricks
I’m really enjoying this end-of-the-year round-up from people speaking their brains. It’s not over yet, but there’s already a lot of thoughtful stuff to read through.
There are optimistic hopeful thoughts from Sam and from Ire:
Only a few years ago, I would need a whole team of developers to accomplish what can now be done with just a few amazing tools.
And I like this zinger from Geoff:
HTML, CSS, and JavaScript: it’s still the best cocktail in town.
Then there are more cautious prognostications from Dave and from Robin:
The true beauty of web design is that you can pick up HTML, CSS, and the basics of JavaScript within a dedicated week or two. But over the past year, I’ve come to the conclusion that building a truly great website doesn’t require much skill and it certainly doesn’t require years to figure out how to perform the coding equivalent of a backflip.
What you need to build a great website is restraint.
How to run a small social network site for your friends
This is a great how-to from Darius Kazemi!
The main reason to run a small social network site is that you can create an online environment tailored to the needs of your community in a way that a big corporation like Facebook or Twitter never could. Yes, you can always start a Facebook Group for your community and moderate that how you like, but only within certain bounds set by Facebook. If you (or your community) run the whole site, then you are ultimately the boss of what goes on. It is harder work than letting Facebook or Twitter or Slack or Basecamp or whoever else take care of everything, but I believe it’s worth it.
There’s a lot of good advice for community management and the whole thing is a lesson in writing excellent documentation.
