If you added a #Mastodon / #ActivityPub follow form to your #IndieWeb site based on Bridgy Fed (e.g. using code/instructions I previously posted¹), you need to update it to add another invisible input element for the "protocol", e.g.:

<input name="protocol" type="hidden" value="web" />

Otherwise people trying to use your form to follow you may see an error from #BridgyFed like:
> Bad Request
> Missing required parameter protocol

Here is the complete example that I posted previously with the new invisible input:

<form method="post" action="https://fed.brid.gy/remote-follow">
 <label for="follow-address">🐘 Follow
  <kbd>@tantek.com@tantek.com</kbd>:<br />
  enter your @-@ fediverse address:</label>
 <input id="follow-address" name="address" type="text" required="required"
        placeholder="@you@instance.social" alt="fediverse address" value="" />
 <input name="domain" type="hidden" value="tantek.com" />
 <input name="protocol" type="hidden" value="web" />
 <button type="submit">Follow</button>
</form>

I also updated that previous post¹ with the new input in case people find that instead.


This is day 42 of #100DaysOfIndieWeb. #100Days

← Day 41: https://tantek.com/2023/139/t1/wikipedia-supports-indieweb-rel-me
→ 🔮


¹ https://tantek.com/2023/020/t2/bridgy-fed-follow-form

↳ In reply to an IndieWeb page @tchambers@indieweb.social thanks Tim! And now two more years of work on AB Priority projects¹ (and whatever else we come up with @AB@W3C.social).

¹ https://www.w3.org/wiki/AB/Priorities

Congrats to fellow re-elected W3C Advisory Board (@AB@W3C.social @W3CAB) members:
* @cwilso.com (@cdub@mastodon.social @cwilso)
* @fantasai.inkedblade.net (@fantasai@w3c.social @fantasai)
* Avneesh Singh
and newcomers:
* @reidmore@mastodon.social (@wendy_a_reid)
* Song XU

Thanks to Heejin Chung and Charles Nevile for your service on the #W3CAB.

https://www.w3.org/blog/news/archives/9933
via #W3C (@w3.org @w3c@w3c.social @w3c): https://w3c.social/@w3c/110491804762139049

Previously: https://tantek.com/2023/128/t1/w3c-advisory-board-election-support

Ran my 11th #BayToBreakers in 1:47:11 on Sunday 2023-05-21, again the day after an @sfrunco.com (@SFRunCo) Saturday trail #run, but this time in the middle of a very long training run, my last before the rescheduled #MUC50k trail race. Ran over 4 miles to the start, hopped in the next race corral, ran Bay to Breakers with the colorfully costumed crowd, picked up my medal, ate a banana, ran back through Golden Gate Park, and then a bit more up city hills to round out 18 miles and 1000'.

#2023_141 #SanFrancisco #runner

2022: https://tantek.com/2022/138/t1/ran-baytobreakers

👍 to issue 493 of GitHub project “bridgy-fed”

↳ In reply to alpaca.gold user Jeremiah’s post @jeremiahlee.com (@Jeremiah@alpaca.gold) you’re right that the #IndieWeb is more of a movement. It’s a community based on shared values & principles¹, one of which is plurality², explicitly prioritizing interoperability over any “particular piece of technology”.

As to “subdomains as usernames using #ActivityPub?”, myself and others are using our (sub)domains as usernames, e.g. via the #BridgyFed service³. Mine should be self-evident in the header of this post wherever you’re reading #fediverse posts.

Completely agree that “a link that also works as a mention name is obvious / intuitable”, have been practicing that for a while, and wrote up some notes about how & why:

* https://tantek.com/2023/011/t1/indieweb-evolving-at-mention
* https://tantek.com/2023/014/t4/domain-first-federated-atmention
* https://tantek.com/2023/018/t1/elevate-indieweb-above-silo
* https://tantek.com/2023/019/t5/reply-domain-above-address-and-silo

which I should organize into a longer blog post at some point.


¹ https://indieweb.org/principles
² https://indieweb.org/plurality
³ https://indieweb.org/Bridgy_Fed#IndieWeb_Examples

↳ In reply to a comment on issue 764 of GitHub project “w3process” Thanks for the FO Council experiments reports citations https://github.com/frivoal.

> https://www.w3.org/2023/03/council-ttwg-report.html
> https://www.w3.org/2022/11/council-das-report.html

These two make it clear that Tim Berners-Lee was a member of at least two FO Council experiments, despite not participating in their final decisions.

From these examples, we retract the premise of the second paragraph of this issue that "We believe the opposite was intended", and thus also the specific fix in that paragraph.

We still think it would be better for the W3C Process for any "life member" of any group to be a non-voting member at most, however we will raise a separate new issue for that for consideration in the normal workflow of triaging & handling Process CG issues.

Given the resolution of the semantics of the first two paragraphs for this issue, no Pull Request (PR) is necessary for those.

For the remaining "consistency and to reduce the chance of confusion" point, as noted, that can go in a separate purely editorial issue/PR and is thus unnecessary to resolve this specific issue.

Ok to close this issue without waiting for those separate issues/PRs to be filed.

↳ In reply to a comment on issue 764 of GitHub project “w3process” Thanks https://github.com/fantasai, despite multiple reviews, somehow missed that https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/Drafts/snapshots/2023-04#groups line:
> … and a participant is a member of such a group.

This resolves the semantics of the first paragraph of this issue as invalid, leaving only potential editorial confusion from the use of multiple terms for the same thing, which is not a MUSTFIX (issue title adjusted accordingly).

👍 to a comment on issue 764 of GitHub project “w3process”

👍 to a comment on issue 764 of GitHub project “w3process”

↳ In reply to @stolinski’s tweet @stolinski
43 CSS V&U length units¹
em rem
ex rex
cap rcap
ch rch
ic ric
lh rlh
vw lvw svw dvw
vh lvh svh dvh
vi lvi svi dvi
vb lvb svb dvb
vmin lvmin svmin dvmin
vmax lvmax svmax dvmax
cm mm Q
in pc pt
px
+6 cont. q²
cqw cqh cqi cqb cqmin cqmax
+% = 50?

¹ CSS Values & Units Level 4: https://drafts.csswg.org/css-values/#lengths
² https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/length#container_query_length_units

Wikipedia.org (@wikipedia@wikis.world @wikipedia) now supports #IndieWeb rel-me!¹
Thanks to @taavi.wtf (@taavi@wikis.world) for the #MediaWiki RealMe extension²

Added it to my #Wikipedia User: page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tantek

View source and you can see the #relMe on a link tag:
 <link href="https://tantek.com/" rel="me">

Instructions to add yours here:
* https://indieweb.org/rel-me#Wikipedia


This is day 41 of #100DaysOfIndieWeb. #100Days

← Day 40: https://tantek.com/2023/114/t1/venues-reviews-personal-pages
→ Day 42: https://tantek.com/2023/160/t1/mastodon-activitypub-follow-form-bridgy-fed


Previously:
* 2023-02-01 GitHub supports multiple rel=me links: https://tantek.com/2023/032/t1/years-relmeauth-replace-openid


¹ https://wikis.world/@wikipedia/110396865170645710
² https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:RealMe

s/agenda bashing/agenda gardening/g

Replace all uses of “agenda bashing” with “agenda gardening”, e.g. in group meetings.

Language matters, metaphors affect framing and reinforce values. Replacing violent metaphors with caring or at least non-violent expressions can help create a more constructive context.

Recommended this particular replacement yesterday during day 2 of our #W3C Advisory Board (@ab@w3c.social¹ @w3cab) meeting, after the #W3CAC meeting earlier this week.

It’s a small change, yet maybe it will inspire others.

Previously: https://tantek.com/2018/365/t3/december-too-busy-post-days

¹ Since the #W3CTAG (@tag@w3c.social @w3ctag) has an account on w3c.social, I figured the #W3CAB should too. Freshly created this week.

Three ways we openly document the governance of W3C:

#w3cAB: As part of driving openness in the #W3C Advisory Board (AB) and W3C in general, when I joined the AB in 2013, I created a stub AB wiki page, and worked with the rest of the AB to expand it over time, to the present where it has quick navigation to both our tools and projects¹.

#w3cBoD: Shortly after the W3C Board of Directors (BoD) was elected last year, I similarly created a Board wiki page, with quick navigation to meetings, minutes, and other publicly available Board resources².

#w3cAC: Prior AB member Art Barstow created an AdvisoryCommittee (AC) wiki page in 2012. I expanded it in the past year with sections on Email Lists and Meetings to help make it easier (more discoverable) for AC representatives to participate & contribute to the governance of W3C³.

These are all good steps, but not complete by any measure. Collectively we can do better.

Openness must go beyond finding & reading such resources.

As these are all on the W3C’s public wiki, which any W3C member (or invited expert) may edit, my hope is that anyone involved with W3C may help update such pages, and further improve them. Encouraging this kind of direct participation in how an organization is run goes hand-in-hand with openness & transparency.

¹ https://www.w3.org/wiki/AB
² https://www.w3.org/wiki/Board
³ https://www.w3.org/wiki/AdvisoryCommittee

Good morning from Sophia Antipolis, France, where myself and many other #W3C Advisory Committee (AC), Advisory Board (AB), & Board of Directors (BoD) members, and members of the W3C Team are here for two days of 2023 #w3cAC meetings¹.

Lots of great presentations this morning.

@cwilso.com (@cdub@mastodon.social @cwilso) is now providing an overview of the Advisory Board² and where we are with our 2023 Priority Projects³, which are done for the most part in the open, on the wiki and GitHub.

Our (AB) practice of developing our projects in the open for both W3C Members and the broader web community to see is something that myself and Chris Wilson (@cwilso.com) have been championing, leading, and driving since our first AB terms in 2013.

We strongly believe in continuing this level of transparency (or better) in the #w3cAB, and there is more work to do on the AB to make this practice an institutional default at W3C, especially in matters of governance.

Related: both Chris and I are running for re-election⁴ for the Advisory Board, and this is one of the reasons we want your support to continue serving on the AB.

¹ https://web.archive.org/web/20230509090512/https://www.w3.org/participate/meetings
² https://www.w3.org/wiki/AB
³ https://www.w3.org/wiki/AB/2023_Priorities
⁴ https://tantek.com/2023/128/t1/w3c-advisory-board-election-support

I am running for election in this month’s #W3C (@w3.org @w3c@w3c.social @w3c) Advisory Board (AB) election¹ and blogged my personal statement: https://tantek.com/2023/128/b1/running-for-w3c-advisory-board-ab-election

@fantasai.inkedblade.net (@fantasai@w3c.social @fantasai) is also running for the #W3CAB, and admirably blogged her imminent affiliation change *before* the election started: https://fantasai.inkedblade.net/weblog/2023/affiliation-change/ — Congrats Elika! Your new affiliation is lucky to have you.

In addition to the two of us, @cwilso.com (@cdub@mastodon.social @cwilso) also posts on his own blog and is running for the AB.

Those are the three candidates I know have their own personal #website, and was able to verify by searching for candidates on the web, #socialMedia, etc.

Three out of the nine candidates² running for election to the World Wide Web Consortium’s Advisory Board.

As I wrote in my statement:

> “I believe governance of W3C, and advising thereof, is most effectively done by those … who directly use & create on the web using W3C standards. This direct connection to the actual work of the web and W3C is essential to prioritizing the purpose & scope of governance thereof.”

I firmly believe that direct hands-on experience with using the web, beyond reading the web or using someone else’s apps, actually writing to the web, posting on the web, creating for the web, provides better insight into the technologies & standards necessary to evolve the web, how to improve them and represent the communities working on them.

I ask for your support for the Advisory Board, and support for those who create on the web.

If any other candidates have their own #IndieWeb site (or set one up!), and especially if they blog their personal statements, I will gladly link to them as well.

Thanks for your consideration.

¹ https://www.w3.org/blog/news/archives/9903
² https://www.w3.org/2023/04/ab-nominations.html

↳ In reply to issue 62 of GitHub project “AB-public” Thanks for raising this issue https://github.com/michaelchampion.

As co-chair of the Sustainability Community Group (https://www.w3.org/community/sustainability/participants) I am happy to champion it.

I believe the first of your proposals is sufficient to resolve the specific subject of this issue, which is to add a sustainability principle or value in the Vision, and link to the TAG Ethical Web Principle of Sustainability accordingly.

In particular, PROPOSED:

* Add "The Web must be an environmentally sustainable platform" as a fifth item in the "Vision for the World-Wide Web" section, and link the phrase “environmentally sustainable platform” to https://www.w3.org/TR/ethical-web-principles/#sustainable

I suggest this proposal be considered in the context of my proposed resolution to #5: https://github.com/w3c/AB-public/issues/5#issuecomment-1524210555 as I believe it is consistent with and adds to that proposal.

If the Vision Task Force RESOLVES on this proposal, I am happy to create a PR for the edit accordingly.

For the remaining points https://github.com/michaelchampion raised of adding specific text for “energy consumed by web infrastructure” and crafting new text for the "We will do this by" section, I’d like to do that as subsequent proposals and edits, presuming the task force resolves on the above granular proposal, if that‘s ok with https://github.com/michaelchampion.

I’m ok with keeping this issue open for that, or (preferably) closing this issue per the title being resolved, and opening new issues for considering creating "how to" text for sustainability.

↳ In reply to issue 5 of GitHub project “AB-public” Since it is now past the end of 2022, and no further async comments were made on this issue, I am PROPOSING as promised more specifically to resolve this issue:

* link the phrase “good of its users” to https://www.w3.org/TR/ethical-web-principles/#noharm
* link the phrase “safe for its users” to https://www.w3.org/TR/ethical-web-principles/#privacy (which includes security)

In addition, since those are only two of the four items in the “Vision for the World-Wide Web” section, and it would read more consistently if all four items were linked to respective TAG EWP points, I PROPOSE to make these two additional changes in the same edit:

* link the phrase “all humanity” to https://www.w3.org/TR/ethical-web-principles/#allpeople
* link the phrase “one interoperable world-wide Web” to https://www.w3.org/TR/ethical-web-principles/#oneweb

While we may want to consider linking other TAG EWP points in other parts of the document, for the purposes of resolving this issue in a discrete manner, I believe it is sufficient and correct to incrementally make this set of four edits as a net improvement (and close out an old issue), while allowing other issues to be filed for additional discrete improvements.

If the Vision Task Force RESOLVES on these proposals, I am happy to create a PR for the edits accordingly.

↳ In reply to pull request 49 to GitHub project “AB-public” Closing this PR as lacking consensus, and shifting discussion to an issue as suggested.

🌱 I have long been a fan of @Foursquare.com and @Swarmapp.com, having created many venues, posted many tips, and (checks profile) over 45,000 checkins. I recently joined @happycow.net and before I start posting new vegan (friendly) venues or reviews there, I really need to figure out my own personal site venue pages (including URL design) and review posts design and authoring workflow.

I’m pretty sure I can and should post h-review posts as a variant of articles (with usual h-entry markup) with an explicit article name, since most review destinations request a title (name) for the review (e.g. HappyCow, TripAdvisor), and for others with only review text (e.g. Google Maps), I can include the name at the start.

Different review destinations have different text requirements (minimum and/or maximum lengths), and I’ll take time to document those first.

The first destination I’ll likely try automatically syndicating to is a site created by #IndieWeb community member @jamesg.blog (@capjamesg@indieweb.social): @breakfastand.coffee

It’s still quite new, but the thing that makes Breakfast & Coffee innovative and unique is that it encourages you to post your venue (e.g. cafe) description or review on your own site with a meaningful slug, link to https://breakfastand.coffee/ and then send a Webmention to indicate that you’d like to syndicate your venue or review into Breakfast & Coffee, like into an aggregator.

Before I get to that point however, I feel there’s quite a few challenges in publishing a “decent” restaurant / cafe venue page, because there really is a dearth of good examples of doing so with simple semantic HTML + CSS. You really don’t need JS to post info about a restaurant.

Setting aside the economic / intermediation challenges of "delivery apps" for now, people really want a few simple things from a restaurant site / page that could all be marked up with simple semantic HTML (thus resulting in good web search rankings) and styled in a quickly readable and mobile-friendly way.

* hours open (perhaps kitchen hours if different)
* location (address that links to a map UI or map embed w/o cookies/tracking)
* nearest bus/tram/rail stop
* payment restrictions (e.g. if only cash, or only credit) or options if you prefer
* contact info (including a note about catering if that’s an option)
* links to social media profiles
* links to restaurant review sites/aggregator pages (e.g. venue permalink on Google Maps, TripAdvisor, Foursquare, Swarm, HappyCow)
* menu with item name, description, price, optional-thumbnail, and dietary/allergy notations

No you really don’t need the full mess of made-up things at schema-org.

The community at OpenStreetMap has done A LOT (most? nearly all?) of the work figuring out the ways to express the above types of information, e.g.:

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:opening_hours

Yet has anyone actually seen a simple semantic HTML page that publishes this kind of information?

I’ve web searched many search terms and phrases and found nothing good.

Stylistically dated templates for sale. Examples with numerous unnecessary scripts (no your typical user does not care about your clever animated 3D-carousel of pretty photos, certainly not waiting for a megabyte of framework scripts for it). Something built on Bootstrap, unnecessary for today’s mobile-friendly HTML+CSS.

I did find one (ONE) blog post from 2007 (those were the days) for semantic markup for a restaurant menu: https://jonchristopher.us/blog/a-semantic-breakdown-of-restaurant-menus/

Unless I find an existing solution soon, I’m going to create something from scratch with h-card (since a restaurant is an organization / venue) and add semantic HTML & class names for various fields, re-using from OpenStreetMap Keys whenever possible.

That leaves the URL design, where to publish my restaurant pages on my own site, and rather than rethink it, I will likely go with what I decided in my Whistle short URL design¹ many years ago, which is /v/ at the top level of my site, followed by a slug of my short name for the venue. This way I can play with static HTML pages there, with a shared style sheet in that same directory, without impacting anything else on my site.

I have some other thoughts around iconography for various diet preferences / allergen warnings for menu items that I’ve tried (or considered), though perhaps I’ll leave those for another post.

Or maybe I’ll braindump them now, however incomplete, to see if they resonate or anyone has better suggestions (restaurants and menus really have no standard for these)

Edit: already updated lists & descriptions based on feedback:

Individual icons/emoji:
🌱 — plant-based (no animal meat or meat broth/oils whatsover)
+🌾 — has gluten
+🥜 — has nuts
+🍫 — has chocolate
+🌶 — is spicy
+🍯 — has honey
+🧈 — has butter
+🥛 — has milk, cream, or yogurt
+🧀 — has cheese
+🥚 — has egg

When present in a menu item (with no other food-related icons)
🌱 = vegan & gluten-free
🌱🌾 = vegan with gluten
🌱🥜 = vegan with nuts
🌱🍫 = vegan with chocolate
🌱🌶 = vegan and spicy
🌱🍯 = vegetarian with honey
🌱🧈 = vegetarian with butter
🌱🥛 = vegetarian with milk, cream, or yogurt
🌱🧀 = vegetarian with cheese
🌱🥚 = vegetarian with egg

with additional combinations as necessary.

For example:

A breakfast sandwich at Devil’s Teeth Bakery²:
* Regular Breakfast Sandwich (no bacon!) $10.00 🌱🌾🧈🧀🥚

Or a chocolate croissant at Arsicault³:
* Chocolate Croissant $5.75 🌱🌾🧈🍫

Judahlicious⁴ jungle açai bowl:
* Jungle Style Açaí Bowl $12.75 🌱

Arizmendi⁵ mint chocolate cookie:
* Mint Chocolate Chip Cookie $2.75 🌱🌾


Non-vegetarian items would omit the plant 🌱 icon/emoji, but could still include allergen icons.

If you are posting restaurants (or any other venues) to your personal site, please add a few of their permalinks to the IndieWeb Examples here: https://indieweb.org/venue#Indieweb_Examples


This is day 40 of #100DaysOfIndieWeb. #100Days

← Day 39: https://tantek.com/2023/112/t2/account-migration-post-blog-archive-format
→ Day 41: https://tantek.com/2023/139/t1/wikipedia-supports-indieweb-rel-me


Glossary

article
 https://indieweb.org/article
checkin
 https://indieweb.org/checkin
h-card
 https://microformats.org/wiki/h-card
h-entry
 https://microformats.org/wiki/h-entry
h-review
 https://microformats.org/wiki/h-review
POSSE
 https://indieweb.org/POSSE
review
 https://indieweb.org/review
URL design
 https://indieweb.org/URL_design
venue
 https://indieweb.org/venue

References

¹ https://tantek.com/w/Whistle#design
² https://www.devilsteethbakingcompany.com/menu
³ https://arsicault-bakery.com/menus
⁴ https://judahlicious.com/menu/
⁵ https://store.arizmendibakery.com/menu-today

↳ In reply to mastodon.social user spreadmastodon’s post @spreadmastodon@mastodon.social it is one of the more amazing examples of emergent distributed alignment that I have seen. There is so much overlap across efforts, principles¹, and goals that it makes sense that we are finding ways of making things seamlessly work together at the edges.

I also see a common desire for enabling more user-owned use of and creating for the web, independent of big corporate ownership (or control), and without any reliance or need for surveillance capitalism.

#Fediverse #IndieWeb #Mastodon #OpenWeb #SpreadMastodon projects do not depend on tracking & profiling users for targeted advertising.

A better web is possible.

¹ https://indieweb.org/principles

↳ In reply to hachyderm.io user maegul’s post @maegul@hachyderm.io @torb@octodon.social #BlueSky is a fascinating experiment to watch, and if there’s one thing we’ve learned from all the work on decentralized/federated social web systems over the past 13+ years (certainly since the first Federated Social Web Summit¹), there’s LOTS of room for and benefits to many folks working on solving many hard problems in parallel, even if with totally different approaches, which can learn from each other.

We learned this lesson in the #W3C Social Web Working Group².

Also a key reason the #IndieWeb community adopted a core principle of Plurality³.

I have a lot of sympathy for "so many non-techies bounce off Mastodon because it’s just too technically difficult for them", it’s one of the reasons I send most folks directly to https://micro.blog/ — it supports following / #federating with #Mastodon, and it supports core IndieWeb W3C standards like Webmention and Micropub.

Regarding what portability requires, I for one disagree that account or post portability needs "signed data repositories and DIDs". I believe that cooperative server-to-server portability can be achieved without it, and frankly, if you‘re wanting to design for uncooperative servers, what expectation can you have that they’ll support any standards or interop whatsoever?

Beyond Mastodon-to-Mastodon account migration, we already have Mastodon-to-BridgyFed (IndieWeb) and Mastodon - to - Micro.blog, and I expect we’ll see that grow to include all directions of all combinations thereof.

I am also optimistic that the “fediverse” will continue evolving various solutions that put users first in different ways, because there are users with different needs.

There’s certainly a current #fediverse hierarchy that puts a lot of power (and burden of responsibility) in the hands of ”server/instance” admins — “feudalverse” was a running joke for a while, reflecting a #federation of instance admin feudal lords and their user serfs.

Ironically, the more that account+posts migration/portability is supported, the more incentive there will be for harmonious and respectful relationships between instance admins and users, so I only see this situation improving in the future.

Long reply summarized: I think the folks innovating at BlueSky are charting interesting waters, the Mastodon development community continues show through improvements that they prioritize users and their identity & data ownership, and the IndieWeb community continues to support & play with those and many other solutions, building bridges⁴ between⁵ them⁶ to interconnect all the things.

Glossary

BridgyFed
 https://fed.brid.gy/
Micropub
 https://indieweb.org/Micropub
Webmention
 https://indieweb.org/Webmention

References

¹ https://indieweb.org/Federated_Social_Web_Summit#Portland_2010
² https://tantek.com/2023/051/t1/five-years-ago-w3c-social-web
³ https://indieweb.org/plurality
⁴ https://brid.gy/
⁵ https://fed.brid.gy/
⁶ https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/381

↳ In reply to fosstodon.org user VincentTunru’s post @VincentTunru@fosstodon.org how can an account boost without broadcasting? Isn’t that built into how boosts work and what they mean? And yes, otherwise a new account boosting/reposting all the old posts would probably annoy all the followers who were migrated.

From a user experience perspective, this also seems odd and a bit misleading, even if only viewed on someone’s profile page. Boosts/reposts usually imply someone promoting someone else’s posts. Self-boosting from a new account feels a bit like spam / sockpuppetry, while boosting/reposting from the same account is at least transparent about what you are doing.

↳ In reply to aus.social user writingslowly’s post Thank you for the kind words @writingslowly@aus.social 🙏🏻

One of the pretty neat innovations from #Mastodon has been actual, functional, and fairly reliable (from all accounts I’ve seen) distributed system account migration, with the notable exception of post migration, which has additional challenges worth exploring.

To be clear, as far as I know, no other blogging (or chat) software, system, or even protocol comes close to achieving the level of functionality described in Mastodon’s documentation:

https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#migration

In short, moving:
* all your profile information
* moving all your followers & followings, transparently
* redirecting your old account to your new one

More at that link. From the docs, it’s clear that quite a bit of thought & consideration went into the design & implementation.

Once I had setup #BridgyFed to #federate posts from my own site¹, I myself made use of the this Mastodon feature to migrate from my try-it-out @t@xoxo.zone account to my #IndieWeb @tantek.com (move destination handled by BridgyFed).

For me the migration experience was 100%, because I had not posted anything @t@xoxo.zone.

The challenge of post migration is not unique to Mastodon, though I believe it goes beyond “simple” export & import support, which is still a good place to start.

Mastodon has two forms of posts “export” currently:
* RSS feeds, which will get you some number of recent posts, by adding ".rss" to the end of any Mastodon profile URL, e.g. https://indieweb.social/@tchambers.rss
* Activity Streams 2.0 JSON, per https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#export (note: it currently says “ActivityPub JSON format”, but there is no such thing, #ActivityPub uses the #ActivityStreams 2.0 JSON format and I’ve filed a PR² to fix this in the docs)

Lots of software & services import RSS, e.g. #WordPress.

As far as I know, nothing (not even Mastodon itself) actually supports importing Activity Streams 2.0.

There is a more complete format (with specification!) for exporting & importing blog content:

Blog Archive Format (.bar), first specified here with example file:
* https://www.manton.org/2017/11/24/blog-archive-format.html
More details and another example file:
* https://www.manton.org/2021/12/27/importing-blog-archive.html

Blog Archive Format has the very nice features of:
* portable HTML feed (h-feed) and JSON Feed
* photos and other media
* locally browsable post archive

Naturally, https://micro.blog/ supports both exporting & importing Blog Archive Format.

There’s an interesting opportunity here for an open source converter
* from Activity Streams 2.0
* to Blog Archive Format

Such a library would make an excellent drop-in addition to any #ActivityPub implementation, allowing both export of posts, and also a browsable archive format, so you could visually double check when importing to another service that these were the old posts you were looking for.

This would be a good first step, using an open standard, towards Mastodon itself supporting post migration³.

Ideally, similar to account migration, the old posts server should also at least:
* redirect old permalinks to the new permalinks
* redirect any replies being delivered by ActivityPub to the new location
* provide #Webmention discovery forwarding from the old URLs to the new URLs (e.g. using HTTP LINK headers)
for some amount of time.

Want to add support for Blog Archive Format or got questions or feedback?

Join in the development conversations: https://chat.indieweb.org/dev


This is day 39 of #100DaysOfIndieWeb. #100Days

← Day 38: https://tantek.com/2023/110/t2/beyond-mastodon-indieweb-own-domain
→ Day 40: https://tantek.com/2023/114/t1/venues-reviews-personal-pages


Glossary

account migration
 https://indieweb.org/account_migration
blog archive format
 https://indieweb.org/blog_archive_format
h-feed
 https://microformats.org/wiki/h-feed
JSON Feed
 https://www.jsonfeed.org/
post migration
 https://indieweb.org/post_migration
Webmention
 https://indieweb.org/Webmention

References

¹ https://tantek.com/2022/301/t1/twittermigration-bridgyfed-mastodon-indieweb
² https://github.com/mastodon/documentation/pull/1202
³ https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/12423

↳ In reply to union.place user Frankc1450’s post Thanks @Frankc1450@union.place!

In short: using my own #IndieWeb blog and blogging software, which has no length limit.

A bit longer:

I make my posts by writing them in @barebones.com’s excellent BBEdit (@bbedit@mastodon.social) text editor, scp them to my blog, which does all sorts of automatic linking (including #hashtags), embedding, generating of archives, streams, feeds, sequential navigation, etc.

I use #BridgyFed to #federate my posts to #fediverse followers on #Mastodon and other #ActivityPub supporting services. More details on that here: https://tantek.com/2022/301/t1/twittermigration-bridgyfed-mastodon-indieweb