(2020-05-19) Cunningham Webmentions And Campfires

Kevin Cunningham on Webmentions and Campfires. Seeing that as I’m engaging with the thinking of others, I’m metaphorically looking towards them. The problem is, how do they know I’m talking about and to them? Or, how do I know if someone is talking to me?

In my world, this primarily happens on Twitter.

But Twitter is a stream and this continuing conversation is ephemeral - while it might add lots to the thinking of the post, it flows away.

It used to be this was solved by having a comments section on a blog. (BlogComment)

This is a form of bi-directional linking. Managing comment sections, however, could be frustrating, though there are some solutions available (Disqus is still around). In my experience, comments sections were not great and were primarily where trolls and spammers went to hang out.

A W3C standard was released in 2017 for webmentions.

I recently enabled webmentions on this blog

Over in the garden, I’ve started a section on webmentions

What other ways can we stop ourselves standing in dark rooms and shouting into the void? How can we light campfires and create spaces for conversation that are welcoming and mutually beneficial?