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Webmention.io

webmention.io

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Re: Webmention.io

#81

Post by xpe »

blowski wrote: post #35
toyg wrote: post #11

Pingbacks are back, baby! What is old is new again, except this time is centralized, so hopefully with less spam but also less independence once FAANG acquire the service.

When did we all end up so pessimistic? An interesting new idea with little more than an MVP, and we've already mapped out its whole demise.

Human nature finds a way to subvert some of the best intentioned technologies.

This is fact. We need to get used to it and solve the tough problems: identity, moderation, spam, discussion quality, community norms, and so on.

Building a service is often easy. Marketing it is harder. Building something useful to a group of people in spite of human nature is probably the hardest.

Re: Webmention.io

#82

Post by xpe »

blowski wrote: post #18
vorpalhex wrote: post #12

So how long before this gets used for spam ala pingbacks?

If we let the possibility of spam prevent us building technology, we should never build anything.

This is a straw man argument. We can and must do both: build and be realistic about misuse.

Re: Webmention.io

#83

Post by xpe »

blowski wrote: post #24
SquareWheel wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but I think it's also worth learning from past experiences. Pingbacks do create a significant spam problem. How does Webmention.io cope with that?

Cross that bridge when you get there. If nobody uses, there's no problem. If so many people are using it that it attracts spam, then the users can decide how to solve it at that point in time.

Kicking the spam can down the road is not the only way to solve a problem, nor is it guaranteed to work.

Up front thinking and design can go a long way.

Re: Webmention.io

#84

Post by leephillips »

xpe wrote: post #79
leephillips wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. This kind of thing encourages substantive conversations.

It seems to me it requires some technical setup. I have no illusions that such things correspond with substantive conversations.

I don’t see why the necessity for setting things up means that the system would not encourage a better style of online conversation. Especially if services are developed for less technically adept people.

Re: Webmention.io

#85

Post by firecall »

dbeley wrote: post #59

I'm too young to know what are webmentions or pingbacks (love the band Pinback though), you should briefly mention what they are on your homepage.

I too did not understand what this did!

Is just a service to automate back links?

Like some sort of SEO spam?

Re: Webmention.io

#86

Post by JimDabell »

chrisaldrich wrote: post #75
SquareWheel wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but I think it's also worth learning from past experiences. Pingbacks do create a significant spam problem. How does Webmention.io cope with that?

Based on experience with Pingbacks, the Webmention specification requires the sending site to have a mentioning URL on a publicly available web page. This requirement by itself cuts down significantly on spam as it increases the cost of sending it. (Pingbacks/Trackbacks didn't have this requirement so it was easy to programmatically spew spam in all directions.) In addition to this, there's no requirement to show the…

> Based on experience with Pingbacks, the Webmention specification requires the sending site to have a mentioning URL on a publicly available web page. This requirement by itself cuts down significantly on spam as it increases the cost of sending it. (Pingbacks/Trackbacks didn't have this requirement so it was easy to programmatically spew spam in all directions.)

It wasn’t required for spec. conformance, but it was recommended by the spec. and implemented by all the early implementations.

> Upon receiving a request, servers MAY do what they like. However, the following steps are RECOMMENDED:

> The server MAY attempt to fetch the source URI to verify that the source does indeed link to the target.

— https://www.hixie.ch/specs/pingback/pingback#TOC3

> In addition to this, there's no requirement to show the received Webmention, so there's less benefit to some spammers in these cases.

This wasn’t a requirement for Pingback either.

Re: Webmention.io

#87

Post by incanus77 »

xpe wrote: post #80
incanus77 wrote: post #13

Excellent concept, project & service. I'm using it together with Brid.gy[1] on my Hugo-hosted blog[2] and it's great for bringing in Twitter likes of posts. [1] https://brid.gy/ [2] https://justinmiller.io/posts/2020/12/23/ornament/

I'm not sure it is excellent -- it seems "just simple enough" to get people to adopt it. It might even work for a small community. For now. How will it scale as more sites interconnect? I don't mean technically -- I mean socially. In particular, how does it handle moderation? ... It seems to me that moderation is left up to the site host. That's not unreasonable given the complexity and diversity of what different pe…

Sure, it's a starting point. But its stated goal is to be:

> a hosted service created to easily receive webmentions on any web page.

Combined with that, it's well-documented, open, simple, and to boot, this site in particular is a free service. I'd say that is indeed excellent — a distinction I'd award any service that espouses simplicity, clarity, fills a useful need, and has a JFDI attitude.

Re: Webmention.io

#88

Post by yaml-ops-guy »

giantrobot wrote: post #78
hashkb wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think modern TV news has eroded all trust that organizations can have more than one opinion / host a civil debate. It's prudent now to assume every news organization has an agenda, no matter how it (says it) conducts itself.

If a show has a host rather than an anchor(s) it's an opinion/editorial show.

Which is how it's been seemingly forever (or at least the age of the television), but I think media literacy and its pedagogy-beyond kind of vague notions of what the "news" is has failed a generation of this distinction, and many more important and built-in nuances of mass media communications.

Not helping matters was the lightswitch flip to 24-hour news and the blurred line between news and "news".

-A J-School grad turned engineer.

Re: Webmention.io

#89

Post by khimaros »

crazypython wrote: post #27
ivansavz wrote: post #2

Oooh I like a lot. The whole idea of a two-way links like the wp pingbacks in the good old days is getting traction. For more info about this, see https://indieweb.org/Webmention and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linkback Another useful related thing I saw is https://brid.gy/ which transforms social mentions into webmentions

Two-way links are why people use tools like Roam or Athens research. I want to see the Web re-become the decentralized, hypertext knowledge graph it was meant to be.

Project Xanadu? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu
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