What is the Fediverse analogue of blogs? Specifically, which facet of the Fediverse provides the features that blogging used to provide:
- long-form posts (without character limits)
- embedded images and other media
- perma-links and RSS / Atom feeds and other features so that content remains linkable into the future
- commenting and engagement and associated moderation features
- re-blogging and sharing
- community: blogs self-organising into interest areas, pollinate other blogs, link to each other, direct their readers towards each other, etc.
And, most importantly, the ability to create, grow and nurture a following or audience?
I'm on Mastodon and on Lemmy and, in my opinion, neither of those quite hit the mark.
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Masto is too close to bird-site: character limits (nearly always), shoddy threads, and the fact that one is invariably just firing toots into a torrential onslaught of public toots unless one actually already has a following. Hash-tags and other topic-related features seem ill used, throughout, so discoverability is pretty low unless you already have a platform. Engaging with others in replies earns a lot of boosts and favourites but zero followers no matter how well your reply-toots are received.
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Lemmy is too close to anotheR site. It's great for being a refuge from that and replacement for that but really not a blogging platform.
I'm happy with both of the above for what they do. I really like the discourse in Masto's reply threads, actually, but it seems useless for actually building a following for one's self. I'm rather new to Lemmy but I like what I'm finding, so far.
I think I'm in agreement. I'm also inspired by Cory Doctorow's recent piece in which he talks about how his blog – pluralistic.net – is ascetic: basically just a static site that spreads through other channels.
Hugo seems ok for this, I'm thinking, along with just about any static site hosting and my own domain name.
Moving into the new year, I'm going to actually do this properly but one key objective is this: I am determined only to write properly on positive topics, creativity, passion, delight and inspiration and to ignore all the hate and the destroyers and the bad stuff.
The TL;DR of my thesis is basically this: I only wish to write about topics I think are worthy of being read and, for me, any work is only worthy if the reader actually stands some slight chance to gain something from ingesting it.
I'm very nearly 40 years old, recently a father, unemployed, burned-out, and of such a confusing string of nationalities that I don't get to vote anywhere in the world despite having worked and paid taxes in three countries on three distinct continents, all of which are supposedly "democracies". As a reader, I can do little against the haters and the destroyers and the plutocrats and I need learn nothing new to recognise them and see them for what they are. As a reader, then, I get no worth from reading more assessments of the "bad", neither is there any shortage of scriveners far more informed and skilled than I who write about that bad. As a writer, I am only interested in writing about the "good": things that other readers can actually derive value from ingesting.
That said, I know I need an outlet to vent in and I know I need another space to experiment in. I don't mind if the "proper" journal and the free-association style blog become unofficially associated with each other for much the same reasons why I don't mind when my personal stuff and my open-source contributions signed under my real-life name get associated: I've nothing to hide. (I choose to live in the world I wish existed: a world in which I need not hide.)
But I don't want them to be too easily linked because that sort of thing becomes a career limiting move simply because dumb algorithms will readily cancel one's professional profile long before any actual human ever sees one's job application or C.V. in a real-life setting.
I'm thinking I'll use the WriteFreely space as the sand-box and do the real essays, properly, with something like Hugo.
I also am a huge fan of personal pages and wish to see their return. Would you join a web-ring with me?