I dunno, I mean, you can do this and it’s a workable technical solution to the problem of having a Meetup but at the same time this is too hard. I just want to click some buttons and let my browser fill in a form for me. Not to be a dick but the only reason I actually went through all of these instructions is because it was voted to the top of lobste.rs and I’m wide awake yet bored. I can’t imagine how many more people saw some angle brackets and then noped out of the page.
Am I wrong in thinking that most people who voted it up didn’t read the article?
I can’t imagine how many more people saw some angle brackets and then noped out of the page.
This is a dev community, so I’m guessing that wasn’t a major problem here?
I’m pro-indieweb, but also pro-usability. Part of getting usable stuff in the distributed web is techies working with angle brackets and figuring things out. In other words, I don’t think this is a final solution, it’s just a step in the journey (the same way, say, needing to add html to join a webring was, back in the early aughts).
A bigger problem is discoverability. That’s one advantage of central platforms that will be difficult to overcome.
I upvoted it not because I thought I’d actually do what the article described but because the solution it describes is so unusual that it made me appreciate the unorthodox approach. It’s not a good fit for general-purpose RSVPs, but that pattern is an interesting way of applying small-scale techniques to avoid the need for one big all-encompassing tech company owning all the data, and that’s worth considering.
Completely agree - this example is usable for just developers.
We’ve built standards like Micropub which make the whole process much more user-friendly to publish to your own site, and there are usability enhancements like Web Actions that could allow you, from the event page, RSVP with just the click of a button, and it’ll then know to publish via Micropub to your own site.
As jmelesky says, the usability needs improving, which is why we need lots more folks involved and feeding in constructive feedback!
We need a way for (regular non-technical) people to be able to easily and quickly take part in the web proper without being exploited by “adtech” or having to worry about surprise extra charges for content or traffic. Uploading some hand-written custom-class HTML to GitHub is no going to be it.
The price of Meetup.com, and not letting “anyone can RSVP” and not “it uses your own website” are all features Meetup.com offers. These aren’t down sides, most of the time. It means meetups require some commitment, some stake in the ground that this isn’t just a random event, it’s an organized cooperative.
Success + anyone RSVPing means handling E-mail-scale spam.
I think the great value of Meetup.com isn’t so much in “RSVP” and whatnot, but in discovery. Most meetups I’ve attended I had no idea existed; especially after moving to a new location. All of that is lost if everyone uses their own “IndieWeb” RSVP solution.
While I’m not aware of anyone who crawls and indexes based on those microformats, in principle that is possible, IIRC it was the main point of the specification. That said, it looks as if Jamie Tanna’s policy is that everyone will write the details from scratch and get it right, without experience, without a linter, without a validator.
When sitemaps were introduced someone built a validator that would parse your sitemap and report both errors and payload immediately. Very actionable.
Yeah, it’s all doable; it’s just not something the article addresses. Something like ActivityPub might also be a solution (although I know very little of the spec, so not sure if it’s a good here).
In general, the “federated web” is new and very interesting, although I’m also concerned that the overall system is much more complex – even if individual sites, like this one – are much simpler, which means it’ll never really be mainstream and restricted to tech communities. I’m not entirely sure what a good solution to that is, if there even is one.
Getting moderate to wide adoption isn’t a black art any more:
Find something that some group of people want.
Make something that can be used, an MVP. The V means “can be used”.
Collect metrics, analyse what works and what doesn’t.
Iterate.
Profit-oriented people need some more steps but that’s irrelevant here.
Assuming point 0 exists this one seems to be just short of point 1 so far. Perhaps they’re working on the V bits now, and there’ll be a new blog posting at some point.
I dunno, I mean, you can do this and it’s a workable technical solution to the problem of having a Meetup but at the same time this is too hard. I just want to click some buttons and let my browser fill in a form for me. Not to be a dick but the only reason I actually went through all of these instructions is because it was voted to the top of lobste.rs and I’m wide awake yet bored. I can’t imagine how many more people saw some angle brackets and then noped out of the page.
Am I wrong in thinking that most people who voted it up didn’t read the article?
This is a dev community, so I’m guessing that wasn’t a major problem here?
I’m pro-indieweb, but also pro-usability. Part of getting usable stuff in the distributed web is techies working with angle brackets and figuring things out. In other words, I don’t think this is a final solution, it’s just a step in the journey (the same way, say, needing to add html to join a webring was, back in the early aughts).
A bigger problem is discoverability. That’s one advantage of central platforms that will be difficult to overcome.
I upvoted it not because I thought I’d actually do what the article described but because the solution it describes is so unusual that it made me appreciate the unorthodox approach. It’s not a good fit for general-purpose RSVPs, but that pattern is an interesting way of applying small-scale techniques to avoid the need for one big all-encompassing tech company owning all the data, and that’s worth considering.
Completely agree - this example is usable for just developers.
We’ve built standards like Micropub which make the whole process much more user-friendly to publish to your own site, and there are usability enhancements like Web Actions that could allow you, from the event page, RSVP with just the click of a button, and it’ll then know to publish via Micropub to your own site.
As jmelesky says, the usability needs improving, which is why we need lots more folks involved and feeding in constructive feedback!
We need a way for (regular non-technical) people to be able to easily and quickly take part in the web proper without being exploited by “adtech” or having to worry about surprise extra charges for content or traffic. Uploading some hand-written custom-class HTML to GitHub is no going to be it.
The price of Meetup.com, and not letting “anyone can RSVP” and not “it uses your own website” are all features Meetup.com offers. These aren’t down sides, most of the time. It means meetups require some commitment, some stake in the ground that this isn’t just a random event, it’s an organized cooperative.
Success + anyone RSVPing means handling E-mail-scale spam.
I think the great value of Meetup.com isn’t so much in “RSVP” and whatnot, but in discovery. Most meetups I’ve attended I had no idea existed; especially after moving to a new location. All of that is lost if everyone uses their own “IndieWeb” RSVP solution.
While I’m not aware of anyone who crawls and indexes based on those microformats, in principle that is possible, IIRC it was the main point of the specification. That said, it looks as if Jamie Tanna’s policy is that everyone will write the details from scratch and get it right, without experience, without a linter, without a validator.
When sitemaps were introduced someone built a validator that would parse your sitemap and report both errors and payload immediately. Very actionable.
Yeah, it’s all doable; it’s just not something the article addresses. Something like ActivityPub might also be a solution (although I know very little of the spec, so not sure if it’s a good here).
In general, the “federated web” is new and very interesting, although I’m also concerned that the overall system is much more complex – even if individual sites, like this one – are much simpler, which means it’ll never really be mainstream and restricted to tech communities. I’m not entirely sure what a good solution to that is, if there even is one.
Getting moderate to wide adoption isn’t a black art any more:
Assuming point 0 exists this one seems to be just short of point 1 so far. Perhaps they’re working on the V bits now, and there’ll be a new blog posting at some point.