Tag: trackback

Rebooting The Blogosphere (Part 1: Activities) [en]

Some thoughts (part 1 of 3) following exchanges on Bluesky with Dave, amongst others. My Facebook exile is clearly bringing to a boil my preoccupation with our reliance on big capitalist platforms for our online presence and social life. Though I never “stopped blogging”, I clearly poured a lot more energy over the last decade into what I now think of as “The Socials” (Twitter, Facebook, Bluesky, Mastodon and the like).

Why? How did that happen? What makes it so much more “easier” to hang out over there than to write here? Dave rightly points out to “1-click subscribe” as a killer feature that Twitter brought to the table (written summary of the podcast if you don’t want to dive into listening). But there is more than that.

I am pondering a lot on what I am “missing”, having lost facebook. On what is “difficult” about blogging, in comparison. Where is the friction?

Very clearly, one thing that The Socials (I’ll drop the uppercase soon) do very well is:

  1. bring everything (reading, writing, responding) together in one seamless interface/site/app
  2. shift interaction closer to real-time and what we perceive as “conversation”.

The rest of this blog post covers the first point. A second one will cover the second one. And finally, in a third post I’ll try and put together a proposal for how we can use our understanding of how the socials manage “so well” to remove friction from blogging and help reboot the blogosphere.

As I was writing this post I poked around in my archives to link to where I’d spoken about some aspects of the topic, so here are a some of those I dug up, in addition to those linked in the text itself (realising I wrote so much about this stuff it makes my head hurt):

I see three main “activities” for taking part in the text-based social web, and a fourth that may be worth distinguishing from the third:

  1. Reading or consuming: basically, taking in things that others have put there.
  2. Responding, commenting, reacting: expressing oneself based on something somebody else has provided.
  3. Writing: making available to others ideas, stories, in a broad sense, our creations.
  4. Sharing or boosting: highlighting for our network/readership things that are not by us.

Some comments regarding this typology (bear with me, it will come together in the end).

Reading

RSS does a good job of allowing us to collect things to read from different sources into one place. Many different tools make RSS feeds available. Many different tools read/collect/organise RSS feeds. However, they usually keep this collection of feeds private.

As Dave says, subscribing to an RSS feed generally requires too many steps. Too much friction. The socials make it 1-click (sometimes two) to follow or friend (connect to) somebody. And it’s right there in front of you, a button that calls you to do it. Inside blogging platforms like WordPress.com or Tumblr, you have some kind of 1-click subscription, but it keeps you in their internal reader (just like the socials do, by the way).

Commenting

Responding/commenting is a can of worms, in my opinion. When I started blogging, blogs had no comments. We responded to each other’s publications by writing on our own blogs and linking to what we were responding or reacting to. I actually wrote about this a couple of days back.

After a few months of blogging, I added comments to my blog, so one could say it’s pretty much always had them. (For the nostalgic: the blogger discuss thread I got my comments from, and the page on my site which for some time provided the PHP comment script to hungry bloggers.) And most blogs have them too, though far from all.

Comments come with issues, as well as opening new doors:

  • first of all, you’re leaving your stuff in a space that somebody else controls (ring any bells?) – when the “host blogger” deletes their blog or their post, there goes your comment
  • second, the way comments are designed invite shorter contributions or reactions – this makes the exchange more conversational and less epistolary, tightening the relationship between the different parts of the exchange provided by different people and quickening the pace
  • comments link back to the commenter’s blog, therefore creating an incentive to comment for visibility and not just for what one has to say
  • the visibility incentive leads to people commenting while adding little value (in the best cases) and outright spam (in the worst, widespread case)
  • the lack of a frictionless system to be informed of responses to comments (think “response notifications” on the socials) leads to interrupted interactions (I liked the term “drive-by commenting“)
  • the widespread presence of comments on blogs raises the bar for what is perceived as “deserving” to be a blog post, possibly contributing to the idea that writing a blog post is a “big thing” that you might need to make time for (or that might suck up half your day), in comparison with just “leaving a quick comment” after reading something
  • the visibility of comments led to it becoming a measure of blogging success, increasing a kind of competitiveness in the space, and, in some cases, even its commercialisation.

I see comments as solving two main problems:

  1. attaching the “discussion” about a publication to that publication: all in one place, instead of spread out in blog posts you might not even know exist
  2. lowering the barrier to entry for participating in said discussion: you don’t need any sort of account to comment.

Over the years, many tools have attempted, in some way, to “fix” the problems that come with comments. A few examples:

  • coComment: solve the “notification” issue by tracking comments made over different blogs – and somewhat, the “ownership” issue, by giving the commenter a central repository of their comments
  • Disqus: solves notifications and central repository (but limited to Disqus-enabled sites) and maybe spam, to some extent
  • Akismet and all the other spam-fighting systems…

In a world without comments, people who read a post will not necessarily know there is a “response” somewhere else out there in the blogosphere. The blog author might see it if the person responding tells them (some way or another), or if they check their referrers (didn’t we all use to do that). But the reader cannot know, unless the blog post author knows, and links to the response. Trackback and Pingback came in to solve this issue, creating a kind of automated comment on the destination post when somebody linked to it (with all the spam and abuse issues one can imagine).

Tags and Technorati also played a role in “assembling” blog posts around a specific topic, which could be seen as some kind of loose conversation.

But it’s not the same thing as having the different contributions to a conversation one below the other on the screen at the same time.

Writing

This one is simple. There are many good tools (many open-source) to write blog posts. You can create an account somewhere and get started, or install software on a server somewhere – with a hosting company or in your basement. They work on mobile, in the desktop browser, or even in apps. There are generally ways to export your content and move to another tool if you want. Some are full of bells and whistles, others are pared down.

Blogging has no character limit – the socials do. This, implicitly, encourages writing different things. Design also does that: is the box I’m writing in something that takes up the whole page (like the one I’m typing this blog post in) or is it a little box that might expand a bit but not that much, like on Facebook (which also doesn’t have character limits)?

I think this is a crucial aspect which should not be ignored. The blog posts I wrote in 2000-2001 are, for many of them, things that would be updates on the socials today. They are not the same as blog posts, and we need to keep that. The way we interact with “updates” or “blog posts” is also different (I’ll come to that below if you’re still reading by then). They generate a different kind of interaction. And sometimes, we start writing an update (or even a comment/reply) and it transforms into something that could be a blog post. How do we accommodate for that?

Sharing

Sharing is trickier, and this is why I’ve separated from writing. If writing can be thinking out loud or telling a story I have in my head, sharing is “I saw something and you should see it too”. Maybe I want to add an explanation to why I’m sharing it, or “comment” (hah!), but maybe I just want to put it out there, nearly like a shared bookmark. Of course, if what I write about what I’m sharing starts taking up a lot of space, I’m probably going to be writing a blog post with a link in it. And if I’m just sharing a link to something, I might as well be using some kind of public bookmarking tool (remember delicious?)

Bringing it all together

This is what I said the socials were great at. When I’m on Facebook, I am on my news feed (reading). I can 1-click-share and 1-click-comment on what I see, in addition to 1-click-subscribe if something new I want to track crosses my radar. If I want to write something, the box to do so is in the same view as my news feed – or pretty much any “reading” page I’ll be looking at (a group, for example; groups are another thing to talk about, but that’ll be another post).

I don’t really have to determine if I want to read, write, share, comment – I go to the same place. Whatever I want to do, the tool and environment remains the same. Tumblr does that well too.

Whereas look at blogging:

  • I want to write a post, I go to my blogging software
  • I want to read stuff, I open my RSS reader (confession: I’ve never been good at this) or conjure up a blog URL from somewhere (memory? bookmark? blogroll? link in another post?)
  • I’m done reading something (in my RSS reader) and want to comment: I need to click over to the blog itself to do that – or wait, do I want to comment, or write a whole blog post? I have no clue how much I’m going to want to write once I get going, I just know I have something to say.
  • I read a great blog post (or other thing online, for that matter) and want to share it, I need to pick up the link and write a blog post. Or maybe, instead, I just stick the link in a toot on Mastodon? There are “blog this” bookmarklets, but what about if I’m on my phone?
  • Yeah, I could post my “statusy updates” to my blog like it’s summer 2000, but do my blog subscribers really want to see “spent a lot of time feeding the sick old cat” in their RSS reader?

Think about community platforms like Discourse: want to post, want to respond, want to read? All in the same “place”. You get notifications, you can configure them. I think there is a lot to learn from this type of platform and the socials to bring “blogging stuff” together.

And before somebody says: “your blog should replace your socials” or “you should just blog on mastodon”, wait for the post I plan on writing tomorrow about what I see as a very important distinction in between these two types of online “social” spaces: exchange intensity and pace.

Ideas like making WordPress and Mastodon work together and FeedLand (in short, it makes your RSS subscriptions visible on your blog; check the new shiny blogroll in my sidebar, thanks for the shoutout, Dave!) are absolutely on the right track, but if we treat all “conversation” and all “publication” the same, we will fail in building an open, independent social web that is integrated and frictionless enough to be a realistic alternative to the facebooks of this world for more than just us few geeks.

Continue reading with part 2!

WordPress Deaf to Pings [en]

[fr] Mon installation WordPress semble refuser les pings depuis deux semaines environ. Aucune idée ce qui peut causer ça.

While I’m at it in the “technical annoyances instead of getting work done” department, with the misbehaving plugin and the Sandbox trouble, my WordPress installation has obviously become deaf to pings/trackbacks over the last two weeks.

I can send trackbacks fine, but not receive them. Even from my own blog. I don’t know where to start searching for the problem.

Oh, and I’ve lost the French excerpt to my post Advisors, Boards, Companies, Partners, Oh My! so if you happen to have a cached copy, would you check it out for me, please?

Damn. This morning is not turning out the way I hoped.

Update, 17:30: the pings from my most recent post just came through! I’m only running Spam Karma 2 now, deactivated both Akismet and Bad Behavior. Hope to identify the culprit soon.

Update, 17:53: now, when I save a post, it sends one ping. If there is more than one pingable URL in the post, I need to save it multiple times. Got bug?

WordPress not Sending Pings Anymore [en]

[fr] WordPress fait des caprices et a arrêté d'envoyer des pings automatiques (trackback, pingback) sans me prévenir. Grinche.

Once upon a time, I loved WordPress because I didn’t have to enter trackback addresses manually anymore — at least, not when I was linking other WordPress blogs, or pingback-enabled blogging tools.

Those days are gone, and I’m not quite sure when it started. I’ve been having a creepy feeling for sometime that I wasn’t getting as many “internal” (CTTS to CTTS) trackbacks as I should. Today, I checked.

Heck.

You know me, I specialize in weird, not-so-reproducible issues. So, it wouldn’t be that WordPress has stopped sending pings altogether, no, that would be too simple.

WordPress has stopped sending pings *most of the time*. But sometimes, every now and again, it sends one. Or a couple. Or three.

What is going on, would you say?

Trackbacks: une erreur courante [en]

Lorsque l’on fait un lien vers un billet dans du texte, il ne faut pas utiliser l’adresse de trackback pour cela. On utilise le permalien — l’adresse permanente du billet sur le web.

L’adresse de trackback (sous WordPress, cette adresse ressemble à  mondomaine.com/2006/01/27/mon-billet/trackback) doit être entrée dans le champ “Trackbacks” du formulaire de rédaction du billet.

Attention!

D’un point de vue technique, ce n’est pas la même chose. Le permalien est une adresse web que l’on visite avec son navigateur, et l’adresse trackback est une adresse de “ping”, à  laquelle notre outil de blogging va envoyer une petite notification.

Femina: une promesse de blog [en]

Malgré tout le mal que j’ai pu dire du site de Femina, il s’y trouve une page qui me paraît fort prometteuse: nos potins.

A premier coup d’oeil, ça ressemble à  un blog — enfin, ça en a la mise en page. C’est joli, c’est aéré, on a envie de lire. Le ton est personnel, assez informel, authentique, comme celui du magazine, d’ailleurs.

Si on regarde de plus près, cependant, on remarque qu’il manque un certain nombre d’éléments pour que cette “promesse de blog” (dixit Anne Do) puisse être véritablement un blog digne de ce nom. Ce n’est pas juste une question d’appellation (surtout pas, en fait!) mais de rôle que devrait pouvoir jouer une telle publication.

A quoi peut donc bien servir un “blog de la rédaction” pour une publication comme Femina? Un blog, c’est bien pour un certain nombre de choses:

  • communiquer de façon transparente, directe et immédiate avec le “public” (les clients, les lecteurs, les électeurs…);
  • créer du dialogue, de la conversation avec le “public” et d’autres acteurs de la blogosphère (qui ne sont pas nécessairement des lecteurs du journal, par exemple) — ce qui renforce la “communauté”;
  • indirectement (car c’est une conséquence du succès dans les deux points mentionnés ci-dessus), augmenter sa visibilité dans les moteurs de recherche, avec toutes les conséquences réjouissantes que cela peut comporter.

Pour qu’un blog puisse mener à  bien cette mission, il y a un certain nombre de pré-requis, techniques et éditoriaux:

  • chaque billet doit avoir une adresse web stable et unique pour qu’on puisse y référer (le fameux “permalien”);
  • idéalement, les visiteurs doivent pouvoir laisser des commentaires ou au moins indiquer qu’ils ont écrit une réaction sur leur propre blog au moyen d’un trackback;
  • le billets doivent pouvoir être rattachés à  leur auteur (un être humain!), plutôt qu’être anonymes ou “collectifs” (on tombe alors dans la situation peu agréable où c’est l’institution ou l’entreprise qui parle);
  • le balisage (HTML et CSS) doit être structural (et non présentationnel) afin d’accomoder les moteurs de recherche comme Google, mais aussi les outils plus spécifiquement axés “blogs” comme Technorati, coComment, TailRank, ainsi que les divers annuaires répertoriant les blogs;
  • le blog devrait également être disponible sous forme de fil RSS/atom afin qu’on puisse s’y abonner et le suivre sans devoir se rendre sur le site lui-même;
  • être très ouvert par rapport au contenu du blog et des commentaires: éviter la censure ou les lourdeurs éditoriales MarCom ou RP;
  • la rédaction et la tenue du blog prend du temps; il faut prévoir du temps à  y consacrer pour qu’il reste vivant.

Il y a sûrement d’autres choses, mais avec ça, c’est déjà  bien parti. Difficile? Non. Il suffit d’utiliser pour son blog un outil de blogging, plutôt que de s’amuser à  vouloir réinventer la roue. La plupart des outils de blogging ont derrière eux plusieurs années d’existence et des équipes de développeurs enthousiastes — il est un peu illusoire de penser qu’on peut faire mieux seul dans son coin, surtout si l’on ne baigne pas déjà  dans la blogosphère. Donc, si on ne désire pas une solution hébergée comme WordPress.com ou TypePad, on installe sur le serveur de son site WordPress, DotClear ou encore MovableType (liste non exhaustive, bien sûr). Comme ça, on est sûr d’avoir sous la main le kit du parfait petit blogueur.

Je reviens à  Femina. Voici ce qui manque à  mon avis cruellement à  la jolie promesse de blog pour qu’elle puisse déployer ses ailes et occuper la place qu’elle mérite dans la blogosphère romande:

  • des permaliens
  • la possibilité de laisser des commentaires et des trackbacks
  • le nom de la personne qui a écrit le billet
  • côté “derrière la scène”: fil RSS/atom, balisage correct, service de ping…

Ce qu’il y a déjà ?

  • un ton de proximité, où l’on sent bien que ce sont des gens qui parlent
  • une jolie mise en page
  • la volonté de faire un blog 🙂

Alors, Femina — si tu relevais le défi?

Easier TopicExchange Trackbacks for WordPress [en]

A WordPress hack which makes it quicker to add TopicExchange channels to trackback, and makes them visible (like categories) in the weblog. (Sorry for the duplicate postings, trying to fix it.)

[fr] Ce 'hack' pour WordPress permet d'ajouter facilement des trackbacks vers les canaux de TopicExchange, et liste sur le weblog les canaux concernés pour chaque billet.

Here is a solution to make it a little quicker to trackback TopicExchange channels with WordPress, and make those channels visible in your weblog.

I love TopicExchange. When I asked Suw what they had talked about during BlogWalk, she mentioned trackbacks. I asked if anything had been discussed about trackback etiquette. For example, I’m often tempted to trackback people who have written posts related to mine, but which I haven’t linked to. Well, the consensus is that this is not what trackback is for. Trackback is really for making a “backlink”. TopicExchange is the answer to the “related posts” issue.

I’ve been using TopicExchange a lot during the last weeks, but nobody has noticed it, apart from those people who already use TopicExchange as a source of information. As Seb Paquet notes, TopicExchange needs to be made more viral. It needs visibility. What follows is my interpretation of “making ITE easier to use, and more visible.”

This WordPress hack creates an extra field in the posting form where ITE channel ID’s (e.g. “wordpress”, “multilingual_blogging”) can be entered (I was tired of typing the whole trackback URL’s all the time). It then stores these channel ID’s as post meta data (in the postmeta table), so that it can retrieve them and display links to the corresponding channels along with the post, just as is usually done with categories.

First of all, add the following code to my-hacks.php. Then, edit post.php (in your wp-admin directory) and add this code where indicated (the comment at the top of the file explains where to insert the code).

Also in post.php, after the line add_meta($post_ID);, insert the following code:

// add topic exchange channels
	if(isset($_POST['ite-topic']))
	{
		$_POST['metakeyselect'] = 'ite_topic';
		foreach($topics as $topic)
		{
    		$_POST['metavalue'] = $topic;
    		add_meta($post_ID);
    	}
    }

In edit-form.php, add this code to create an extra input field for ITE trackbacks:

$form_ite = '<p><label for="ite-topic"><strong>Trackback</strong> TopicExchange:</label>
(Separate multiple channel ID's with spaces.)<br />
<input type="text" name="ite-topic" style="width: 360px" id="ite-topic"
tabindex="8" /></p>';
	$form_trackback.=$form_ite;

It goes near the top of the file, after the line which defines $form_trackback (do a search for that and you’ll find it).

Finally, in your index.php template, you can use <?php the_ite_channels(); ?> to display a paragraph containing a comma-separated list of channels trackbacked for each post. If you want to change the formatting, play around with the function definition in my-hacks.php.

If, like me, you have old posts with trackbacks to TopicExchange, and you would also like these to appear on your posts, use this patch from inside wp-admin. The patch will tell you what meta data it is adding — just load it once in your browser and check the result in your weblog. (Don’t load it twice — it’s supposed to be able to check the existing channels in the database to avoid duplicate entries, but I haven’t got it to work. Read instructions and debug notes at the top of the patch file.)

In future, it will also be possible to use the TopicExchange API to return the “nice title” for the channels listed — so we sould have “Multilingual blogging” instead of “multilingual_blogging”. (I’ve asked, it will behas been added to the API.)

Good luck with this if you try it, and as always, comments most welcome!

Note: as far as I have tested, the code seems to work now.

Connect to BlogTalk [en]

BlogTalk resources: live stream, topic exchange, wiki page… stay connected, whether you are lucky enough to be in Vienna or not.

If you aren’t lucky enough to be attending the BlogTalk conference today and tomorrow, you can still follow the fun with the live stream from the conference.

Other than that, two topics to keep an eye on over at Topic Exchange:

Topic Exchange allows to comfortably solve the problem “do I trackback other related posts, even if I haven’t linked to them directly?” — use Topic Exchange.

If you’re at the conference and/or staying at Hotel Atlas, make use of Rendez-Vous (Rendez-Vous allowed me to “bump” into a fellow blogtalker last night), the BlogTalk wiki page and #blogtalk on freenode. Also — no fear of stating the obvious — come up for a chat, I love meeting others in the flesh!

Trackback? Qu’est-ce que c’est? [en]

Une petite explication du trackback pour les néophytes. Un trackback, c’est un moyen automatique de mettre un commentaire sur le billet de quelqu’un d’autre, pour dire qu’on a écrit un billet qui en parle. Facile!

Bon, alors, ces fichus trackbacks qu’on voit partout et dont tout le monde parle et qu’on a toujours pas compris, c’est quoi à  la fin? A la demande générale (les lémaniques concernés se reconnaîtront), une petite explication bien basique comme je les aime.

Imaginez que j’écris un billet qui vous inspire réflexion, au point que vous fassiez un billet en rapport sur votre propre weblog, au lieu de bêtement laisser chez moi un commentaire que vos lecteurs à  vous risquent bien de ne jamais voir. Vous faites un lien vers mon billet pour donner le contexte. Mais depuis chez moi, aucun moyen de savoir que vous avez écrit une réaction très pertinente à  ce que j’avais pondu!

La méthode classique, c’est de laisser quand même un commentaire chez moi, disant “hé, j’ai écrit un truc à  propos de ce que tu racontes ici, voilà  le lien”, et hop, le tour est joué. Seulement, à  la longue, ça devient un peu lassant de faire ça, et on voudrait bien un machin automatique qui le fasse à  notre place: le trackback.

Vous l’aurez donc à  présent compris, le trackback, c’est un bidule qui vous permet de mettre automatiquement (sans vous lever de votre bureau) un commentaire chez moi qui dit “hé, j’ai écrit un truc en rapport, venez voir!”

OK, bon, mais comment ça marche? Ce qu’il faut savoir d’abord, c’est qu’en principe, c’est votre “machine à  trackback” qui va parler avec ma “machine à  trackback”, et ils vont régler tout ça entre eux. La “machine à  trackback”, elle est en général intégrée à  l’outil de blogging qu’on utilise: Movable Type bien sûr, ou bien encore DotClear et WordPress, sans oublier les solutions “hébergées” TypePad et U-blog. Depuis peu, le système de commentaires HaloScan inclut également les trackbacks. Et depuis belle lurette, Primitive, tout en français, vous permet d’ajouter des trackbacks n’importe où.

Votre “machine à  trackback” va envoyer un message à  la mienne (un “ping”) en indiquant le nom de votre weblog et son adresse, le permalien de votre billet, et un extrait de ce que vous avez écrit. Il envoie ce message à  une certaine adresse (le fameux “TrackBack URL for this entry” que vous avez surement déjà  croisé dans la blogosphère), qui est en fait celle de ma “machine à  trackback”, agrémenté du numéro de mon billet. Mais tout ça, vous n’avez pas besoin de le savoir ni de le comprendre, vu que nos “machines à  trackback” s’en occupent très bien toutes seules.

Bon alors, comment on fait, concrètement? On admettra que vous avez déjà  une “machine à  trackback” installée. (Si vous voulez en installer une, ça c’est les règles avancées, et ce n’est malheureusement pas couvert par ce petit billet.)

La première chose à  faire, donc, c’est de cliquer sur le lien “commentaires” de mon billet pour dénicher l’adresse de trackback à  utiliser. (Pour ce billet, c’est http://, vous l’avez trouvée?)

Ensuite, il faut dire à  votre “machine à  trackback” d’envoyer le ping à  la mienne. Avec Movable Type, par exemple, cela signifie simplement que lorsque vous publiez votre billet, vous devez coller mon adresse de trackback dans le champ “URLs to Ping”. C’est tout. Le trackback apparaîtra comme un commentaire associé à  ce billet, avec un lien vers votre propre billet. Essayez!

Une chose intéressante est que les parties “envoyer” et “recevoir” de la “machine à  trackback” sont indépendantes. On peut tout à  fait envoyer des trackbacks sur d’autres sites sans pour autant les avoir activés sur le sien. Les sites utilisant Primitive, par exemple, fournissent un formulaire permettant d’envoyer un trackback. Ce formulaire peut en fait être utilisé pour envoyer des trackbacks, même si vous ne possédez pas votre propre “machine à  trackbacks”.

En guise de conclusion, un sujet de réflexion: quand envoyer un trackback? Uniquement lorsque j’ai fait un billet qui lie un autre billet, ou bien déjà  quand j’en fais un qui a un lien avec d’autres billets? Par exemple, j’ai écrit un petit compte-rendu de la troisième LBN, comme l’ont fait d’autres, mais je n’ai pas mentionné les adresses de leurs comptes-rendus dans mon billet (certains n’étaient pas écrits).

To trackback or not to trackback? That is the question.