How did the regression test go? Wellll, I did break a bunch of stuff. But I put the pieces back in place. And with any luck this post will show up on the other end. It did.

I have been thinking, for years now, why not reconceive the discourse system on the social web to factor out moderation. It is the web, so anyone can add a feature any time without having to rewrite the whole web. I've been trying ideas out for years, but everyone preferred the silos. Hoping now at least there are enough people to start a bootstrap. Won't be much of a discourse system if people don't course.

Today's song: Folsom Prison Blues.

Tim Bray did an analysis of how the Sarah Kendzior suspension on Bluesky would have played out in the Mastodon world. The thing I keep thinking of is this -- why not reconceive the whole discourse system on the social web to factor out moderation. Something a lot less contentious. That's what I hope to be using soon. That's, finally, what I am working on now.

This is one of those days I am pretty sure I have nothing to write about but as I get going I'll remember stuff to write about.

Now I have the other half of the bridge working. This post is full of the testing I did on this, and yes it all worked. I'm going to post something new and see if it makes it through to the other side. And you get to see if it works or not. And now I'm going to make a change. Having made the change I want to see if it made it through. It's kind of remarkable to me that I got this much done in one day. That's what happens when you invested in good tools. And this is where the changes have been visible, on a scratch site used just for these occasions. Tomorrow, the third day of this project, I clean up the loose ends and then we should be good to go with the posts I make on scripting showing up in daveverse. Then I can get started with the next project that depends on this.

I absolutely love Pluribus, but it has the hardest freaking name to remember. I love stories like this, with new assumptions about what is, and people coping with what may or may not be great, or boring, or who knows what. I know they've got me thinking about it all the time, and that is what I like in a good televised story.

It's kind of weird for me to be hanging out around WordPress, but I like it. They've been very welcoming. It's kind of like I imagine it would be for Ward Cunningham to be working with Wikipedia. It may not have been everything he wanted from wiki's but it might be the best ...

Some pre-dinner testing. That was correctly recognized as a new item.

Here's what I'm doing. I want to get all my blog posts together in one place. I still want to use Electric Drummer to write stuff for scripting.com, there's a whole system built around it being where it is. But, I want all the posts on scripting to also appear on the daveverse site, so that they first version of my discourse module can be simple to create, debug and use. So I've got the first half working, I've got a script that hooks in via WebSockets to FeedLand and is notified every time Scripting News updates. It mirrors the updates to a site on WordPress (for testing) and once it works, I'll have it send the stuff to Daveverse. That part remains to be done. Not sure if it'll be a desktop app or a server-based app. But now I need a break. ;-)

One more before lunch.

The hits keep comin! ;-)

As promised here is another test post. I will now add another sentence to the post...

You will probably see a series of test posts here, as the day goes on.

Good morning. I like how things are going in FeedLand and WordLand today. The dots are starting to connect.

A short podcast about Sarah Kendzior, Johnny Cash and Bluesky.

I've added the NetNewsWire blog to my blogroll.

The big news is that there are now docs for source:markdown. The goal is to have a writer-friendly standard for text on the net that's as useful as the one for audio was. We've never had that for RSS. As with everything in RSS-land, cooperation among the different vendors was never its strong point. I hope to change that, and plan to build a network for written text as open and powerful as the one that developed for podcasting.

Fixed a longstanding performance bug on the scripting.com home page. Sometimes it'd just sit there for five seconds. Really embarrassing. It might feel faster now. Still diggin!

New developer notes for source:markdown. Report problems here.

As part of the process I reviewed the developer notes I posted in 2022. I see why there was confusion, it was so early in the process. I'm replacing those developer notes with new ones, that's based on more practical experience.

An example feed that has lots of source namespace elements.

Today I'm going to work on re-shaping the docs for source:markdown because it seems to becoming a thing that people are supporting in their feeds and in their feed consumer apps. We're going to have discuss how it's supported, on both ends. What goes into a source:markdown element, and what does not, and how should readers use it. I will assume the role of benevolent dictator, as I did with RSS 2.0, with a bit more of an understanding of what's important. See Rule #1 in Rules for Standards-makers. "The only reason we have open formats and protocols is so our software can interoperate." And the Rule of Users: "People choose to interop because it helps them find new users. If you have no users to offer, there won't be much interest in interop."

BTW, if you have a question about source:markdown, or want to raise an issue, this is the place to do it.

Scripting News' feed now supports source:markdown.

Now that Cory Doctorow has put enshitified into our vocabulary, I find myself looking for evidence of it in AI, and finding it everywhere. There is a common thread. Amazon Alexa has a really nasty habit of finishing a song by asking me if I want to listen to some other version of it. I'm sure that seems like a nice friendly thing to the product people at Amazon, but please -- I'm grooving on the energy of the song, and the last thing I'm thinking about is some asshole robot interfering with my train of thought with a question so stupid only a machine could think of it. Okay I think that qualifies for enshitification right there. Can we have a rule that AI bots must by defalt behave like a computer. I, your human overlord, the one who is paying the bills, will ask the questions. And you will not speak until you are spoken to.

Before I was so rudely interrupted, I was going to write a short post about how I never thought about how good Credence Clearwater is, until Andrew Hickey did a whole longish episode on them. The story isn't that interesting, but the music is great, lots of fun. Never realized it. Right now I'm listening to Born on the Bayou, lovin it.

I figured since I'm out there asking everyone (nicely I hope) to add source:markdown to their feeds, it kind of sucks that my own feed didn't support it. Now it does. I've started a thread on GitHub to report problems, and I can see that there will be some. If your feed reader prefers markdown, you will see the problems right off, I think.

Good morning sports fans!

WordLand is one of the few products that works hard to make sure that it has effective competition. It lays out a welcome mat for competitors. That's what DemoLand is all about. I think I finished it today, have to do another review, maybe two, before making it public. It is the opposite of a product that's meant to dominate. It's more like MacWrite, to fill a niche as an invitation to others to come play. Remember in the web, all parts are replaceable.