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Post by Ray on May 4, 2023 9:37:34 GMT
It is important now to proclaim that we no longer consider what we do as part of a web revival. We have progressed largely beyond such a characterization because what we have achieved and reorganized around in our final phase is something fundamentally new to the web. The "Yesterweb" is now an outdated and misleading term - we have grown to be far more "today" and "tomorrow" than we are "yesterday". So. The Yesterweb dissolved. What's next? The organizers left us with a very thorough summary. As a TL;DR to keep everyone up to speed: This might be a little long. Brevity is not a quality I possess. To those still willing to listen: thank you. We hope that it will help observers and participants gain a better understanding of everything that happened and is still happening, and that this serves as a useful resource for those individuals deciding to continue the project in the same spirit that we have summarized in the mission. [...] this summation was created in part to convince the community of the necessity of making a course correction, and to take up the task themselves. There is no better time than today - and if we don't take up the task, no one else will. We are the community. It's easy for us to feel like creators/mods of online spaces "owe" something to us, like we're clients in their business. But, this is exactly the kind of thought we're aiming to dismantle! We cannot wait for someone else to do all the hard work and for us to reap the benefits. If we truly feel the need for something good to happen, we must work on it ourselves. We must make it happen. I am absolutely grateful to the Yesterweb organizers and mods. They have provided us a thorough analysis of their experiences. It's now up to us to formulate some hypothesis - and then, experiment! If you took the time to read the YW's summary, I'd love to hear from you. If you feel like you uncovered something precious by being in the movement, even for a brief time, and would like to see more of that in the world - that's two of us. I'd love to build something with you. These are just my immediate ideas and thoughts. I have no experience in community building, so I'm not going to hand out great ideas for how to rise up to the task. But I am willing to put my work into something worthwhile, I am willing to take on some risks, I am willing to start a conversation, learn some skills, read some books, do some stuff! First, and most importantly: * What would the benefits of forming a cohesive community be, compared to practicing the etiquette and manifesto personally? > What is being asked of a community like this? How can it best serve its future members? Other things on my mind: * Keeping our efforts confined to the peripheral web means naturally interfacing ourselves with more niche sets of people, mostly English-speaking, and middle to upper class. It's essential to expand our reach, and hear out a more diverse group of people.
> is it possible to practice rehumanize social relations on platforms built for the opposite? Would we be fighting for a lost cause if we took our approach and practiced it on spaces like twitter, instagram, facebook? >> I feel like tumblr might be a small exception, with it allowing long-form content, a more "traditional" blogging experience, and little to no algorithms deciding what you see. Drawback is that the tumblr population *is* itself a niche, so the problem remains. > it'd be interesting to hear about the experiences of people living in non-english speaking countries. What's the online situation there, what spaces do your connationals inhabit? * The Web Revival space seemed in fact like a promising space to find likeminded people to cultivate this sort of community with. You have a lot of people dissatisfied with the experience they're having on the core web, and who decided to still be active and participate in peripheral web communities. Clearly, it didn't work out in the end. In part, because of the role of nostalgia in the Web Revival movements. But I can't help but ask -- had the organizers been less burned out by the time they realized their true intent, and were able to communicate it more clearly from the beginning, would things have been different? > I wasn't there for the OG Discord days, so I would love to hear experiences from people who were there. What were the efforts to create a community based on the Manifesto like in the Discord days? > What sort of other communities could relate to our messages and get something good out of it? Who would like to meet us and build something new, and how do we reach them in the vastness of the web? Other interesting things to consider: purelyconstructive 's Building Vital Communities Virtual & Actual topic raises a lot of interesting points! I wasn't able to reply in time on the YW forum so I'll do it here @how Design Affects Interaction & The Integration of Ideals - first off, this actually gave me much food for thought. I do believe, right now, a long-form medium like a forum board is the best choice, because it gives everyone a chance to chime in, even if they miss some important conversation at first. I was taken aback by this part of the summary: Because I feel like this was a big issue only because they were using a fast-paced client. This is also the reason I personally dislike them for more in-depth conversations than catching up and chatting: you need a lot of free time to be online so often. So what it happens is that a small group of people who have a lot of free time on their hands will dominate the conversation, and people who are busier irl will miss out on a lot of opportunities. It's a shame, because they often might have different perspectives to share, in virtue of leading (often) different lives. A community that "moderates itself" - I really like that as a concept, because it requires the users to step up and stop being consumers, and instead be active members of something! Moderation work still needs to be there in case of bad faith actors (spammers, trolls, and the like), but being able to form a cohesive community that shares core values is no doubt helpful for "setting a standard". By what I understand, the big issue with the YW movement was that it wasn't very cohesive, since it started out with a certain goal, but then changed it during its lifespan. But, I still have some thoughts about it that I'm sorting through. I will get back at you once I've made them clearer in my mind, I feel like it'd be cruel to subject you to my incoherent rambling lol! All I can say, for now, is that it seems "impractical" - like the sort of thing you really think should work, but once you try to apply it in real life, it never does. Why? If you were to build a community like this yourself, how would you do it, in practice? Also, thank you for your thread about Resources For Building Social Networks! runyourown.social is a fascinating and exciting read! I wasn't a fan of mastodon, but I think I finally get the beauty of a federated network of small social medias. The way he proposes the concept of a "neighborhood" of small allied communities - I feel like that mimicks our natural tendencies to form and expand groups much better than anything I've seen before on a social media. Important drawback is that this method requires a very small, active community of people you trust. Managing a larger community like that is going to be expensive and time consuming. It seems more tailored to people you already know personally + their friends, than to get a bunch of internet strangers together to get to know one another, if it makes sense? IMO it could be a very, very cool project to do, individually, if we have friend groups we know might be interested! And practice re-learning an healthier way to be online with them, if they'd like
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Post by purelyconstructive on May 5, 2023 4:18:30 GMT
What would the benefits of forming a cohesive community be, compared to practicing the etiquette and manifesto personally? I think one of the biggest benefits would be the opportunity to collaborate on long-term projects that are difficult for individual people to do alone. What is being asked of a community like this? How can it best serve its future members? The answers to these will most likely change from person-to-person. However, it seems reasonable to assume that those who took the time to migrate here are interested in embodying the Manifesto and Etiquette in an online space in some way, and to some extent, seeing that carry over into day-to-day life. is it possible to practice rehumanize social relations on platforms built for the opposite? Would we be fighting for a lost cause if we took our approach and practiced it on spaces like twitter, instagram, facebook? This pair of questions reminds me of a story...You may have already heard it... Many starfish washed up onto the beach all along the shoreline. A person was tossing them back into the ocean so that they wouldn't dry out and die. Another passes by and asks, "What difference does it make? You'll never get to them all." "It made a difference to that one," they said in reply as they tossed a starfish back into the sea. ...In other words, I think that they can be changed from the inside-out, but it would mostly likely be through meaningful one-on-one interactions. The organization of groups seems external to it. it'd be interesting to hear about the experiences of people living in non-english speaking countries. What's the online situation there, what spaces do your connationals inhabit? I'm interested in this too. It is going to vary quite a bit... * Some places have a lot of activity, but are isolated in some way (e.g.: China has something akin to its own Internet because of "The Great Firewall"). Excluding language barriers, it is difficult interacting with it from the "outside" (e.g.: many platforms require a Chinese phone number to make an account), or reaching the rest of the Internet from the "inside" (e.g.: it requires a little bit of technical understanding to find a reliable VPN from inside of China). * Some things have developed along different trajectories (e.g.: Yahoo! is still a very popular search engine and online auction site in Japan). * Some places have their Internet access completely regulated by companies (e.g.: Facebook) or their respective governments. ...etc. The Pew Research Center has some interesting statistical breakdowns (e.g.: Internet Seen as Positive Influence on Education but Negative on Morality in Emerging and Developing Nations) and related news items. But I can't help but ask -- had the organizers been less burned out by the time they realized their true intent, and were able to communicate it more clearly from the beginning, would things have been different? I take a view that is similar to what Madness stated within The Forum Is Shutting Down thread... In my experience, it is impossible to "make" people care. The only thing that can be done is to live it out and share it as best as you can. Throughout that process of refinement you meet people on a similar path. Therefore, I would like to think that all of us meeting here is a culmination of the "Yesterweb" rather than an ending of it, a necessary transformation within its lifecycle into something greater. I wasn't there for the OG Discord days, so I would love to hear experiences from people who were there. What were the efforts to create a community based on the Manifesto like in the Discord days? In the earliest times, the community itself was very small and naturally friendly (e.g.: people reminiscing about things from their childhood, talking about daily life, sharing personal website updates/art/writing/games, and so on). There were no explicitly stated aims and the behavior expected was pretty straightforward (e.g.: no insults against other users, put comments in the their appropriate channels, etc.). It seemed to become more purposeful as the conversations around Web3 started to develop. We all spontaneously started talking about alternatives together, but there was still a lot of confusion as to what we should do as a group about it. I could give some specific examples of when this occurred, although the details don't seem to matter much now. I'm not sure how it changed after I left, but originally there were a couple of channels called #Manifesto and #Organization where we would brainstorm together. Questions would be posed and there would be dialogues back and forth. Then, a list of main ideas would be distilled out of that. This is where Appendix II of the Yesterweb Summary came from. In my opinion, two events happened fairly close together which led to a huge loss of cohesion and derailed many of those plans when they were first forming. They have already been mentioned elsewhere: 1. A wave of people went silent after the server contents were posted to 4chan and harassment started 2. New members skyrocketed because several journalists started taking interest in Neocities and/or the Yesterweb What sort of other communities could relate to our messages and get something good out of it? Who would like to meet us and build something new, and how do we reach them in the vastness of the web? I would state that every community could relate to it if one can find the language to explain it in ways that they could understand. Building genuine connenctions founded upon mutual respect is a fundamental part of being human. purelyconstructive's Building Vital Communities Virtual & Actual topic raises a lot of interesting points! I wasn't able to reply in time on the YW forum so I'll do it here Thanks for taking the time to read it. Funnily enough, I was in the process of compiling a collection of research notes that picks up where that article left off. The name of the file is even similar to the title of this thread (i.e.: Systematically Building A "New Web"). It is a very long document filled with many different ideas. I haven't had as much time as I would like to put it together, but had planned on posting it here when it is done. I'm maybe a third? of the way there. So what it happens is that a small group of people who have a lot of free time on their hands will dominate the conversation, and people who are busier irl will miss out on a lot of opportunities. It's a shame, because they often might have different perspectives to share, in virtue of leading (often) different lives. Exactly. As the number of people increases within a Discord server, it starts to become an all day effort just to keep up with the posts. And if the conversations are getting off-topic, you have to sort through that as well. I state that as a user, not an admin. I really am not surprised that they got burnt out trying to manage all of that on top of going through the websites in the webring, editing the zine, making content for the radio, moderating the forum, and so on. But, I still have some thoughts about it that I'm sorting through. I will get back at you once I've made them clearer in my mind, I feel like it'd be cruel to subject you to my incoherent rambling lol! Lol! I look forward to reading them. If you were to build a community like this yourself, how would you do it, in practice? One aspect is trying to program those kinds of feedback loops that I mentioned into the features of the platform itself. The other has to do with how "user experience" is set up. I will probably talk about this more in oistepanka's MidGarden thread because my plans sound similar on the surface of it... Also, thank you for your thread about Resources For Building Social Networks! No problem. Glad I could help in some way. The first two links were actually shared with me and I wanted to pass them on. It seems more tailored to people you already know personally + their friends, than to get a bunch of internet strangers together to get to know one another, if it makes sense? Yes, that makes sense. Friends start off as "strangers" though, and friendships can flourish from having shared interests and goals.
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loaf
Web Surfer
Posts: 14
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Post by loaf on May 5, 2023 12:10:16 GMT
* What would the benefits of forming a cohesive community be, compared to practicing the etiquette and manifesto personally? > What is being asked of a community like this? How can it best serve its future members? So, to me there seem to be two separate but related goals. One, is to form a community for ourselves that abides by the etiquette and manifesto. And the second is outreach, or efforts to spread the etiquette to others. In terms of serving its members, probably having an explicit mission statement and committing to some sort of experimental organization and structure. Compared to putting the etiquette into practice personally, one benefit might be seeing how conversation & group dynamics evolve when everyone abides by the etiquette. Many starfish washed up onto the beach all along the shoreline. A person was tossing them back into the ocean so that they wouldn't dry out and die. Another passes by and asks, "What difference does it make? You'll never get to them all." "It made a difference to that one," they said in reply as they tossed a starfish back into the sea. ...In other words, I think that they can be changed from the inside-out, but it would mostly likely be through meaningful one-on-one interactions. The organization of groups seems external to it. Well said! I was planning on making the same point, but you said it much more elegantly, haha. The other idea I would tack on is that maybe a sub-goal might be to encourage more people to join the peripheral web, such that the periphery wasn't purely niche. Maybe creating more tools or guides to make joining less technically challenging? Certainly after Musk's acquisition of Twitter there has been a contingent of people trying out different social medias, though that exodus doesn't necessarily equal a re-evaluation of culture. I do believe, right now, a long-form medium like a forum board is the best choice, because it gives everyone a chance to chime in, even if they miss some important conversation at first... I agree! (In terms of implementation, I believe the YW forum was hosted with phpBB -- if anyone's in contact with any of the YW organizers, we could ask how they did it, or just figure it out ourselves). And the general sense I get from the community is that we're generally interested in slow-paced communication... and of course a forum also helps mitigate issues with time-zones, allowing for more international connections & conversations. And also, given how different forums are from most modern internet spaces, I imagine the mere act of signing up involves a certain amount of openness to alternate ways of communicating (the etiquette) A community that "moderates itself" - I really like that as a concept, because it requires the users to step up and stop being consumers, and instead be active members of something! Moderation work still needs to be there in case of bad faith actors (spammers, trolls, and the like), but being able to form a cohesive community that shares core values is no doubt helpful for "setting a standard". If you were to build a community like this yourself, how would you do it, in practice? [...] runyourown.social is a fascinating and exciting read! [...] Important drawback is that this method requires a very small, active community of people you trust. Managing a larger community like that is going to be expensive and time consuming. It seems more tailored to people you already know personally + their friends, than to get a bunch of internet strangers together to get to know one another, if it makes sense? I think it would be very difficult to have a community with unrestrained growth that's able to maintain a culture of self-moderation. I buy into the runyourown.social arguments that small user sizes are important, that with a large enough group, consensus in values becomes more and more difficult. I recall Madness (or maybe another YW mod) had an idea of a (maybe federated) community that fragmented into parts whenever it became too large, though practically speaking I'm unclear of how that would work. I'm not a fan of mastodon's twitter-like structure (I prefer more topic based discussion, like a forum), though I'm now imagining some kind of forum-version of mastodon... but also forums are likely capable of supporting a larger user-base without cultural disconnect, unlike a fast-paced medium like discord.
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Post by purelyconstructive on May 8, 2023 20:45:51 GMT
The other idea I would tack on is that maybe a sub-goal might be to encourage more people to join the peripheral web, such that the periphery wasn't purely niche. Maybe creating more tools or guides to make joining less technically challenging? I agree with this strongly. I was actually going to mention it within the Collaborative Website thread. [Thank you for putting it together by the way! Clever implementation of that idea.] Easy to understand explanations are a form of self-empowerment for both the people using them and the people making them. It can be tricky disentangling oneself from a large centralized platform once we start integrating a bunch of our activities with it. Guiding people through that transition towards ones that are less invasive, or demonstrating how to build platforms that mitigate those problems, can be very helpful. It would also be neat to have tutorials that extend beyond online creations (e.g.: how to make DIY computer hardware). In terms of implementation, I believe the YW forum was hosted with phpBBThere are several alternatives with interesting features as well. I recall Madness (or maybe another YW mod) had an idea of a (maybe federated) community that fragmented into parts whenever it became too large, though practically speaking I'm unclear of how that would work. Just thinking out loud... Maybe when the number of sign-ups to a forum reaches a certain threshold (e.g. 50 users), it automatically triggers the creation of a parallel instance of the same forum software that successive user accounts are grouped into. This process continues for every group of 50. Information can be shared across all forums if the individual users choose it, but each forum is moderated separately by its respective users. The total number of forums can be capped through a mechanism similar to what is described within the runyourown.social document on "neighborhoods". This would make it so that they are all united by shared vision, but the total amount of activity is slowed down to allow each portion to "catch up". For example, if the newest users are clearly grouped together like this, then it could make it easier for the users of the older forum to help them acclimatize to the "culture" that has already been established. I am unsure how one can do this without using time as a factor (e.g.: date of account creation). Maybe the users that interact the most with one another are grouped together? Or maybe they are grouped by shared interests according to a small survey given when a person signs up?
It would be interesting to develop methods to "merge" two already existing forums into this sort of mutual support structure as well.
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Post by blog47177 on May 13, 2023 15:55:36 GMT
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Post by Ray on May 14, 2023 7:15:16 GMT
Sorry I'm not too active, life likes to get in the way! :') Anyways - blog, can you elaborate on what you mean? What do you mean with "a let's see if it works or not type situation?" Sorry, I just want to understand properly! ^^ I know the manifesto has changed - both the official one and Sadness' own one. Thanks for linking that by the way! <3 I really appreciate she took the time to revise it, but didn't think to share it myself. The organisers (which Sadness is as well!) have been very clear about it: they started out in a certain direction, then realized they actually cared about something else. This is what this discussion is about after all!
Editing this with other stuff too it'd be interesting to hear about the experiences of people living in non-english speaking countries. What's the online situation there, what spaces do your connationals inhabit? I actually meant to elaborate a bit on this from my own POV, too! I'm Italian, and my experience, though still extremely Western, is a bit different from that of English speaking countries, maybe. Growing up online and having learned English at a young age, I always inhabited English speaking online spaces. This has made it much easier to connect me to topics, hobbies, senses of humour etc that were the best fit for me - but it also alienated me a bit from my country's own "online culture". Sometimes, it's really simple stuff: maybe I'd follow ENG memes on tumblr, and my classmates would follow ITA meme pages on facebook. Our senses of humour then became a bit different, and we weren't able to share the same memes and "pop culture" anectodes. There absolutely *is* some sort of culture being shaped online by all of us, together. Niche hobbyist stuff like the Web Revival is also a pretty "english-speaking" thing. I've met very few italians who are into that - all of them from the North of the country, the richest, most "international" side. It's people who live far away from me, and probably live pretty different experiences from me as well. I would say that the space most inhabited by my "peers" are Meta socials - instagram and facebook. Those are the places you'd go to keep in contact with friends, follow events and organizations, find opportunities for work and learning even, or get connections in certain contexts (artists in the publishing scene in Italy do most of their networking on IG, it seems, while FB is the place to find groups to go hiking, make friends, do hobbies togethers etc). My experiences following the YW principles and reflecting on my relationship with the web has done me *a lot* of good. I'm living a happier life by just... not having social media apps on my phone anymore. But also: I will go back and use them, after a couple years of radio silence now. Because my reflecting has also brought me to realize something else: what I love about the Web is the possibility to meet other people, make friends, find opportunities to learn and grow. And I want to do this with my peers, especially! Spending all of my online time on the peripheral web means that, inevitably, my culture will become more alike that of people from other countries. And while these perspectives are invaluable, I must not sacrifice my connection to the people around me. I now think I have the ability to be able to use the "core web" as a tool to get in contact with people near me, rather than a black hole to be sucked into. Genuinely, the only social medias I don't think I could ever get back into are twitter and tiktok. Twitter is somewhat widely used - but in my experience, my connationals use it either as a place to vent and be miserable or angry at the void, or to spread misinformation and hatred. tiktok I'm not familiar with, but knowing how my brain reacts to dopamine, I assume it would do me much more harm than I could ever do it good lol Many starfish washed up onto the beach all along the shoreline. A person was tossing them back into the ocean so that they wouldn't dry out and die. Another passes by and asks, "What difference does it make? You'll never get to them all." "It made a difference to that one," they said in reply as they tossed a starfish back into the sea. Thank you for this! we're all individuals that were touched by something really nice. It was worthwhile, if only for us few starfishes. "If I can ease one life the aching,/ Or cool one pain, /Or help one fainting robin /Unto his nest again, /I shall not live in vain". So, to me there seem to be two separate but related goals. One, is to form a community for ourselves that abides by the etiquette and manifesto. And the second is outreach, or efforts to spread the etiquette to others. In terms of serving its members, probably having an explicit mission statement and committing to some sort of experimental organization and structure. Compared to putting the etiquette into practice personally, one benefit might be seeing how conversation & group dynamics evolve when everyone abides by the etiquette. I think you hit the bullseye! Just creating spaces where we exist and have a good time is changing people and changing things. A community is just a space where people come together to put their values in practice and have a decent time thanks to them (if they work - and if they don't, back to the drawing board again!) It seems more tailored to people you already know personally + their friends, than to get a bunch of internet strangers together to get to know one another, if it makes sense? Yes, that makes sense. Friends start off as "strangers" though, and friendships can flourish from having shared interests and goals. Fair enough! I initially felt it would be a bad idea to create something like this with strangers, because it's "small" nature means that few people will be able to join. With friends - you probably don't have a bunch. With strangers, it feels unfair to deny someone entry just because they were late to the party, so to speak. But, it could encourage others to step up and create a small istance of their own - get a federated network of neighbohrs going! And if you really want to join but no one is up for hosting it, it could be a good reason to start studying how yourself if you really want it! Maybe when the number of sign-ups to a forum reaches a certain threshold (e.g. 50 users), it automatically triggers the creation of a parallel instance of the same forum software that successive user accounts are grouped into. This process continues for every group of 50. Information can be shared across all forums if the individual users choose it, but each forum is moderated separately by its respective users. The total number of forums can be capped through a mechanism similar to what is described within the runyourown.social document on "neighborhoods". This would make it so that they are all united by shared vision, but the total amount of activity is slowed down to allow each portion to "catch up". For example, if the newest users are clearly grouped together like this, then it could make it easier for the users of the older forum to help them acclimatize to the "culture" that has already been established. I am unsure how one can do this without using time as a factor (e.g.: date of account creation). Maybe the users that interact the most with one another are grouped together? Or maybe they are grouped by shared interests according to a small survey given when a person signs up? It would be interesting to develop methods to "merge" two already existing forums into this sort of mutual support structure as well.
My only doubt when it comes to this system, is how to avoid different "subcultures" to form that are very different one from another. Especially if all of the "elder" members are grouped together away from the newbies - if I remember correctly, the YW did have the issue of new members coming in from certain spaces from the core web and taking along their antisocial behaviour with them. Having elder members around to show the way could be good, if only to show like "this is how it could be if you want". Also - I personally have little to no knowledge on... creating online stuff that works for other people so I can't really comment on some of your proposed technical methods, Sage, simply because it's very hard for me to imagine how those could be able to be put into practice, what kind of skills are needed, etc. But, the creation of a small social media via mastodon thanks to the link you shared seems extremely viable even for someone like me. I would be up for something of that nature! <3 I am also interested in expanding the conversation and getting together more people with diverse interests that go beyond tech. I think our fascination with the web and tech unites us, but it would be cool to have a space where a diverse range of topics and interests could be shared and discussed constructively online. I'll also join the conversation over at the topic on Midgarden! the-web-raft.boards.net/thread/29/midgarden linking it here too since I'd say these discussions are going to be kind of interlinked <3 The other idea I would tack on is that maybe a sub-goal might be to encourage more people to join the peripheral web, such that the periphery wasn't purely niche. Maybe creating more tools or guides to make joining less technically challenging? I agree with this strongly. I was actually going to mention it within the Collaborative Website thread. [Thank you for putting it together by the way! Clever implementation of that idea.] Easy to understand explanations are a form of self-empowerment for both the people using them and the people making them. It can be tricky disentangling oneself from a large centralized platform once we start integrating a bunch of our activities with it. Guiding people through that transition towards ones that are less invasive, or demonstrating how to build platforms that mitigate those problems, can be very helpful. It would also be neat to have tutorials that extend beyond online creations (e.g.: how to make DIY computer hardware). Yes!! I feel like online material geared towards the "technical" side of things, like hardware or setting up things more complicated than a facebook page, are often written by people that are a bit... eliteist? They make things really hard for the uninitiated, look down on simpler but "lesser" solutions, are quick to judge you, etc. It would be really nice to have more tutorial material made by knowledgeable people, but geared towards those who know very little and are not in those tech spaces. Especially stuff about hardware. I'd love love love to see that!!
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modro
Web Surfer
Festive vibes in the city...
Posts: 20
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Post by modro on May 16, 2023 6:39:50 GMT
whow. some material. good thoughts. the building a new web is maybe too... maybe like "making a new life-form"... you cant "do it". it happens on itself. i think there is also not a single solution to this networking. there are diverse cases that take different ways of handling data. In my oppinion the only way making a positive progress is in education of the users. making people aware that many things are possible. educating about the infrastructure of the internet and tools, diverse use cases... /being a good example. maybe the yesterweb became too-good example - and became a target. couse good examples are many times targeted.
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Post by blog47177 on Jun 4, 2023 14:07:47 GMT
Sorry I'm not too active, life likes to get in the way! :') Anyways - blog, can you elaborate on what you mean? What do you mean with "a let's see if it works or not type situation?" Sorry, I just want to understand properly! ^^ I know the manifesto has changed - both the official one and Sadness' own one. Thanks for linking that by the way! <3 I really appreciate she took the time to revise it, but didn't think to share it myself. The organisers (which Sadness is as well!) have been very clear about it: they started out in a certain direction, then realized they actually cared about something else. This is what this discussion is about after all!
Editing this with other stuff too it'd be interesting to hear about the experiences of people living in non-english speaking countries. What's the online situation there, what spaces do your connationals inhabit? I actually meant to elaborate a bit on this from my own POV, too! I'm Italian, and my experience, though still extremely Western, is a bit different from that of English speaking countries, maybe. Growing up online and having learned English at a young age, I always inhabited English speaking online spaces. This has made it much easier to connect me to topics, hobbies, senses of humour etc that were the best fit for me - but it also alienated me a bit from my country's own "online culture". Sometimes, it's really simple stuff: maybe I'd follow ENG memes on tumblr, and my classmates would follow ITA meme pages on facebook. Our senses of humour then became a bit different, and we weren't able to share the same memes and "pop culture" anectodes. There absolutely *is* some sort of culture being shaped online by all of us, together. Niche hobbyist stuff like the Web Revival is also a pretty "english-speaking" thing. I've met very few italians who are into that - all of them from the North of the country, the richest, most "international" side. It's people who live far away from me, and probably live pretty different experiences from me as well. I would say that the space most inhabited by my "peers" are Meta socials - instagram and facebook. Those are the places you'd go to keep in contact with friends, follow events and organizations, find opportunities for work and learning even, or get connections in certain contexts (artists in the publishing scene in Italy do most of their networking on IG, it seems, while FB is the place to find groups to go hiking, make friends, do hobbies togethers etc). My experiences following the YW principles and reflecting on my relationship with the web has done me *a lot* of good. I'm living a happier life by just... not having social media apps on my phone anymore. But also: I will go back and use them, after a couple years of radio silence now. Because my reflecting has also brought me to realize something else: what I love about the Web is the possibility to meet other people, make friends, find opportunities to learn and grow. And I want to do this with my peers, especially! Spending all of my online time on the peripheral web means that, inevitably, my culture will become more alike that of people from other countries. And while these perspectives are invaluable, I must not sacrifice my connection to the people around me. I now think I have the ability to be able to use the "core web" as a tool to get in contact with people near me, rather than a black hole to be sucked into. Genuinely, the only social medias I don't think I could ever get back into are twitter and tiktok. Twitter is somewhat widely used - but in my experience, my connationals use it either as a place to vent and be miserable or angry at the void, or to spread misinformation and hatred. tiktok I'm not familiar with, but knowing how my brain reacts to dopamine, I assume it would do me much more harm than I could ever do it good lol Many starfish washed up onto the beach all along the shoreline. A person was tossing them back into the ocean so that they wouldn't dry out and die. Another passes by and asks, "What difference does it make? You'll never get to them all." "It made a difference to that one," they said in reply as they tossed a starfish back into the sea. Thank you for this! we're all individuals that were touched by something really nice. It was worthwhile, if only for us few starfishes. "If I can ease one life the aching,/ Or cool one pain, /Or help one fainting robin /Unto his nest again, /I shall not live in vain". So, to me there seem to be two separate but related goals. One, is to form a community for ourselves that abides by the etiquette and manifesto. And the second is outreach, or efforts to spread the etiquette to others. In terms of serving its members, probably having an explicit mission statement and committing to some sort of experimental organization and structure. Compared to putting the etiquette into practice personally, one benefit might be seeing how conversation & group dynamics evolve when everyone abides by the etiquette. I think you hit the bullseye! Just creating spaces where we exist and have a good time is changing people and changing things. A community is just a space where people come together to put their values in practice and have a decent time thanks to them (if they work - and if they don't, back to the drawing board again!) Yes, that makes sense. Friends start off as "strangers" though, and friendships can flourish from having shared interests and goals. Fair enough! I initially felt it would be a bad idea to create something like this with strangers, because it's "small" nature means that few people will be able to join. With friends - you probably don't have a bunch. With strangers, it feels unfair to deny someone entry just because they were late to the party, so to speak. But, it could encourage others to step up and create a small istance of their own - get a federated network of neighbohrs going! And if you really want to join but no one is up for hosting it, it could be a good reason to start studying how yourself if you really want it! Maybe when the number of sign-ups to a forum reaches a certain threshold (e.g. 50 users), it automatically triggers the creation of a parallel instance of the same forum software that successive user accounts are grouped into. This process continues for every group of 50. Information can be shared across all forums if the individual users choose it, but each forum is moderated separately by its respective users. The total number of forums can be capped through a mechanism similar to what is described within the runyourown.social document on "neighborhoods". This would make it so that they are all united by shared vision, but the total amount of activity is slowed down to allow each portion to "catch up". For example, if the newest users are clearly grouped together like this, then it could make it easier for the users of the older forum to help them acclimatize to the "culture" that has already been established. I am unsure how one can do this without using time as a factor (e.g.: date of account creation). Maybe the users that interact the most with one another are grouped together? Or maybe they are grouped by shared interests according to a small survey given when a person signs up? It would be interesting to develop methods to "merge" two already existing forums into this sort of mutual support structure as well.
My only doubt when it comes to this system, is how to avoid different "subcultures" to form that are very different one from another. Especially if all of the "elder" members are grouped together away from the newbies - if I remember correctly, the YW did have the issue of new members coming in from certain spaces from the core web and taking along their antisocial behaviour with them. Having elder members around to show the way could be good, if only to show like "this is how it could be if you want". Also - I personally have little to no knowledge on... creating online stuff that works for other people so I can't really comment on some of your proposed technical methods, Sage, simply because it's very hard for me to imagine how those could be able to be put into practice, what kind of skills are needed, etc. But, the creation of a small social media via mastodon thanks to the link you shared seems extremely viable even for someone like me. I would be up for something of that nature! <3 I am also interested in expanding the conversation and getting together more people with diverse interests that go beyond tech. I think our fascination with the web and tech unites us, but it would be cool to have a space where a diverse range of topics and interests could be shared and discussed constructively online. I'll also join the conversation over at the topic on Midgarden! the-web-raft.boards.net/thread/29/midgarden linking it here too since I'd say these discussions are going to be kind of interlinked <3 I agree with this strongly. I was actually going to mention it within the Collaborative Website thread. [Thank you for putting it together by the way! Clever implementation of that idea.] Easy to understand explanations are a form of self-empowerment for both the people using them and the people making them. It can be tricky disentangling oneself from a large centralized platform once we start integrating a bunch of our activities with it. Guiding people through that transition towards ones that are less invasive, or demonstrating how to build platforms that mitigate those problems, can be very helpful. It would also be neat to have tutorials that extend beyond online creations (e.g.: how to make DIY computer hardware). Yes!! I feel like online material geared towards the "technical" side of things, like hardware or setting up things more complicated than a facebook page, are often written by people that are a bit... eliteist? They make things really hard for the uninitiated, look down on simpler but "lesser" solutions, are quick to judge you, etc. It would be really nice to have more tutorial material made by knowledgeable people, but geared towards those who know very little and are not in those tech spaces. Especially stuff about hardware. I'd love love love to see that!! Like Everybody Here I am trying to follow the logic Sadness intended here though.
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Post by purelyconstructive on Feb 2, 2024 19:51:01 GMT
Ray and anyone else who might be interested... Awhile back, I had stated: ...Funnily enough, I was in the process of compiling a collection of research notes that picks up where that article left off. The name of the file is even similar to the title of this thread (i.e.: Systematically Building A "New Web"). It is a very long document filled with many different ideas. I haven't had as much time as I would like to put it together, but had planned on posting it here when it is done. I'm maybe a third? of the way there. That document has repeatedly multiplied in size over these past few months whenever I had the opportunity to work on it, but some core parts of it have finally been posted here. Although, most of what I have shared on this forum is attached to this same purpose (i.e.: trying to shift civilization towards something constructive for everyone), so it probably doesn't matter much to differentiate one post from another. There is still a lot more to go in the unfolding of this plan though... I must confess that I find it a bit amusing whenever I see comments on the Yesterweb Neocities feed exclaiming something along the lines of "TL;DR!" or "Ewww, politics!". That is not a criticism of anyone making such comments. There are many things that seem to be steadily decreasing people's attention spans and heightening their sense of "busyness" to the exclusion of the world around them. My only point is that I probably evoke a similar reaction whenever people see the walls of text that I post on related subjects. Hahaha! [Seriously though, I appreciate anyone who takes the time to read and ponder, even if they do not reply. It is always my hope that any attention given will return something beneficial to you.] I wanted to take a moment to explain something about the above document. I've tried to thoroughly address two things that came up within The forum is shutting down thread... #1. To quote Auzzie: The Realigning Our Systems With A Humanistic Purpose section is an attempt to do just that, to revisit the past in order to create a different future. By exploring the history of home computers and communication networks within the context of the Counterculture in which they were developed, I wanted to show that both offline and online concerns are thoroughly interconnected to one another and always have been. Further, it provides a useful background for when we start presenting more of the technical details. As an added bonus, it meshes well with what I am trying to do with RNDTBL (as described within the MidGarden thread). Hopefully, my personal goals seem more tangible after being grounded within things that already exist. #2. To quote Madness: The section called A General Sociological Framework tries to condense that aspect of the Summary into a helpful visual, and The Transformation of Subcultures and Countercultural Expansion sections try to explain the dynamics of that process. I saw the shutting down of the Yesterweb Discord and Forum more like the scattering of dandelion seeds on the wind. Sometimes things reach an apex, fragment, and multiply. What exactly is it that we are trying to expand? An approach to communication that embodies a sense of caring and compassion, to literally change the world through Love! I hope you all are doing well. ♥
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