💾 Archived View for gmi.bacardi55.io › blog › 2024 › 03 › 01 › no-interaction-ugc-to-see-here captured on 2024-08-24 at 23:54:49. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2024-03-21)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Posted on 2024-03-01
This post is both a response to [webmentions make me sad] from [Alex] and [Interactivity of personal sites and webmentions] from [Johanna], as well as a reflection I've been currently having about [webmentions] and Fediverse comments for this blog.
This post isn't a criticism of anyone. I'm not saying I'm right and this post is the truth. I don't care / mind / judge people that wants more interactions, small or big, and want to display them on their site. This post is merely me trying to explain what I think and why I'm doing things like I do, and what I'm looking for my small website.
Interactivity of personal sites and webmentions
This site doesn't allow to add or display any user generated content (UGC). One could argue that I can't because this is a static site, but it could be easy to add comments via discuss or an opensource alternative like [Isso] or [Chirpy]. Or even display webmentions or Fediverse comments like I see on many other great IndieWeb blogs (but that would require to add Javascript, which I don't want either anyway). But I don't, and probably never will. There are many reasons (other than not wanting JS) for that and I thought it would be a good blog post.
Before going further, let me start by saying that I do enjoy interactions with people browsing this site, and do encourage anyone to reach out via the different contact methods on the [About page]! But none of those exchange will be displayed here, except if it really add something the content itself. But I'm trying to respond to anyone that reaches out, however long it can sometime take…
There are multiple reasons I don't do this, but in a nutshell: simplicity, avoiding moderation, full control and trying to avoid the dopamine addictions linked to some type of interactions like on social media.
I own this small place of the web. The pages of this website are mine and all content displayed here has been written by myself. I'm the one "validating" what is published, in term of content, external links, the presentation (UX/UI), etc…
I don't want anyone else to publish things here, and that include comments or others. I'm not saying people write useless comments, but it means I would have to moderate those comments, and as well agree to see a mix of very different comments at the bottom of each pages. Some interesting giving more details, some reactions, some unrelated comments (and as usual on the internet, some mean ones).
Most of the time, I don't see the value of displaying those on personal blogs. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I don't see the value in the interactions! The lack of value reside within the display of said interactions. One could argue that it would allow group interactions. And that is true… To some extent, because usually people will start talking about many different things in comment threads (if not insulting each others). In an ideal world, many users conversations should go back to email. Maybe a mailing list with a thread per post is a nice option welcoming anyone?
It's fair to say based on the above that I don't trust spam protections and other tools to limit "bad actors". I don't want to spend time moderating and deleting stuff. Which will become even worse with all the new "AI" content generation crap… Have you seen that AI are creating (dumb and wrong) github tickets now?
I wrote a few years ago about [why I write and this blog], which can be summarized in one sentence:
Why do I have a blog? […] for me, myself and I
--
This is where I write about stuff I learned, did, thought about or anything I want. I do it for myself because I like it. And if it help or please anyone, even better! But if not, that won't change what and / or when I write here. I don't think many people read this blog anyway :D.
This is also why I don't gather any type of analytics / statistics. I don't know how many people visits this site, from where or when, or which article is the most read. I don't want to know, that would change how I run this site otherwise. And as a transition to the next part, I don't want analytics for the same reasons I don't want comments, likes or reposts being displayed: I don't want to fall for the dopamine addiction generated from these specific interactions
It is well known that social media are known to create a dopamine addiction effect as well as generating a need for validation / approval. All the likes / reposts / and whatever we can do on those platforms are highly impacting our mental health and mood because they are making us dopamine junkies and in constant research for approval. I understand the positive effect that those can have on us, but I'm also aware of the very negative impact they may have. I'm trying to stay away from them. That's why even on the Fediverse, I don't display Favorites and boosts, only mentions.
From time to time I look at favorites as I know it is used as a "cool/nice/… toot" or "message received/read" but I try to avoid that. Mentions are usually more interesting because they add something more than "I read this". Even a short message with "cool post" is, for me, better than a click on a star icon. But often those message contains more and a real discussion can start.
Bookmarks in the IndieWeb are interesting, and I do have a [bookmarks page] too, but I don't need to now if someone bookmarked one of my post. That is also why I don't send webmentions for links added to my bookmarks, but only for my blog posts.
Johanna wrote:
Logging on gemini was, I will admit it, rather boring. There was no feedback. Where was my easy and quick validation?
--
Well, that was one of the key selling point of Gemini for me: a space focused mainly and almost only on content. Meaningful interactions via gemlogs (and possibly bbs and station). But I fully agree that we are not all looking for the same thing online, and that's fine!
Yes! This is true for any interactions, would that be via comments, webmentions, emails or any. At this stage, if any exchange with someone is relevant for the article itself, I simply edit the content, indicating from whom and how I got the information. It doesn't happen often enough to be problem, or at all :D.
I would gladly edit a post to add a link to a response post received by webmentions. I believe this is the perfect fit for webmentions. That's why when I worked on the [Gemini version of webmentions], I only copied for the response type of interactions, not the likes/reposts. But coding something to only display those specific webmentions wouldn't be trivial at all, so manual cherry picking is fine by me at this (very) slow pace.
"Au contraire", I welcome them! I just don't them displayed on the site! But go to the [About page] and you will find many ways of reaching out to me: email, Fediverse, matrix, IRC or webmentions. That should be enough ways for anyone to send me a message :). I've received message from all these channels (1st one via matrix was actually on the day of writing this post!) and responded to (I think) all of them.
Doesn't it limit small interactions though? Yes, maybe. But it may be better for avoiding the dopamine issue above? I don't really know, but also I don't want to have stats like this about my post and then ask myself: why this one has no like/repost whereas this one does? I just want to keep on doing me, so for that having kind of blinker may help :).
Alex wrote on their post:
No, I don’t want to email you or send you a webmention to say « hehe this was funny ». Some things are funny, but not « share on my platform » funny.
--
If visitors don't want to take the 2min necessary to find me on the Fediverse, IRC, matrix or copy/paste my email within their email client… Well I'm ok not knowing they saw the site. If they liked it, that's awesome. But I'm fine not knowing it (again, otherwise I would enable analytics).
Johanna wrote:
Some maybe prefer short comments, others long ones, it's not really something we can know unless we ask them, though. I think most people are glad to hear any feedback at all about their blog posts.
--
Yes, I fully agree, we would all be glad, but does it has to be displayed on the site itself? I, personally, don't want that.
I didn't say that. You can still write short things like that. Today I received via matrix:
Hey your site is awesome
That's it. "Short and sweet" as they say in the US. Of course I liked reading this and didn't need more. The fact that this was written on matrix opened the possibility to continue the conversation quite naturally and easily (and we did exchange a couple sentence more). Would have been the same via email or the Fediverse. Wouldn't have been via a comment section on the website (at least, in my opinion).
I read [Sara Jaksa]'s post too, that includes:
[…] maybe I also see blogging as the way to have a topical discussions, that are both asynchronous and divergent. I mean, reading something could inspire a blog post. Maybe reading somebody's blog can make one person think about multiple topics. Or maybe there is a commentary, that can show the same topic from a different perspective.
--
Which is what I want to use webmentions for. Not for likes / repots / bookmarks, but more for building asynchornous discussions. I would happily link such response posts at the end of each articles. Because there is no way to programmatically define that, I'll edit my post for the extremely rare occasion where that might happen (rare because I don't receive much webmentions and reponses via blog, not because the recieved ones are not interesting).
Let's use this post to also remind everyone reading this owning a website: please do not forget to share at least one way of contacting you, whatever it is, many of us would love to tell you what we found cool on your website.
I'm going to adapt something Alex said
Every blog without a comment section makes me sad.
--
My version: `Every blog without a contact section makes me sad'. Please, dear bloggers, allow us readers to reach out to you :).
I understand that this post may make me sound arrogant and full of myself, only wanting long and quality interactions… But that's not what I'm saying. The TLDR; is: "I welcome any type of interactions on any available channels, just my website isn't one of them. Sorry if it is an issue for you."