discuss

From IndieWeb

Joy Division album cover style chart of 90 days of IRC activity Join the #indieweb discussion via the web, Slack, IRC, or Discord clients now with additional channels for dev, wordpress, and meta specific chat! Matrix used to be supported until the bridge hosted by element.io was disabled.

All are welcome to participate in chat and meet other members of the IndieWeb, discuss personal websites and IndieWeb projects, ask for help with technical issues, and more.

Wondering Which channel should I use when and why?

For technical information about how our chat and related services function, see discuss infrastructure.

Read Discussions

Discussions about the IndieWeb take place primarily in our chat channels:

 

Join Discussions

Join the discussions! The IndieWeb chat is bridged equivalently across four different chat services so that users can use their preferred chat client!

Join via the Web

Tips:

  • When using the online chat, you can change your username by sending /nick <new username> into the chat.

Join via Slack

Join via IRC

IRC:

Having trouble connecting? Refer to Libera’s Connection Guide

Join via Matrix

2023-11-28: The Matrix bridge hosted by element.io has been disabled for good.

Join via Discord

Discord invitation link: https://discord.gg/dqmFnvmN7N

The Discord bridge is using the go-discord-irc daemon; if you encounter issues with the bridging itself, please ping Peter Molnar.

There are some ongoing issues with the Discord bridge: messages from Discord to IRC may get lost in the wire. Please report any problems you experience.

Add your icon

To have your icon or avatar show up on some of the platforms you'll need to add yourself to the list of chat-names (even if you're not using IRC). Due to some restrictions, avatars may not necessarily bridge across all platforms.

Chat Channels Purposes

Each of our chat channels has a specific purpose documented below.

Channel purpose mini-FAQ:

  • Not sure which channel to use?
  • Not sure if something belongs in #indieweb or #dev?
  • WordPress topic/example that seems more broadly IndieWeb related?

indieweb

#indieweb channel
Welcome to the indieweb! How to get on the indieweb, get started, how to post, what to post, indieweb events to join the community in-person, why indieweb (including applying principles directly to pragmatic personal site goals & improvements), what software / services are ready for users to use without dealing with coding or command lines.

Keep it user-centric please!

Not sure if you should ask a technical question here? Ask yourself:

  • Could someone who has never built a website understand what you’re about to say/ask?
    • If not, please ask in the indieweb-dev channel instead!
    • Everyone’s skill level and experience is different. Avoid words like “simple”, “just”, “obviously”, “easy” when explaining things. Such words may cause shame when people run into difficulty. Further reading is available in a blog post written by Chris Coyier on words to avoid in educational reading.
  • Is someone using jargon, code, or dev talk?

Politely request such conversations move to the indieweb-dev channel (see below). We encourage the whole community to help with this, to keep the main chat friendly for newcomers and folks that want to focus on using the indieweb! And it helps avoid encounters like:

For topics about the community, reasons/thinking behind (or evolving) the principles that are not otherwise directly tied to specific personal site improvements, please take those discussions to the indieweb-meta channel.

Lastly if you’re not sure where you should ask about a topic, you can ask that question in indieweb-meta.

dev

#indieweb-dev channel (#dev in Slack)
Development tools, services (like Bridgy), issues, APIs, creating anything besides content, and any kind of jargon. E.g. creating design, UX, implementation details, protocols (like HTTP, Webmention, Micropub, IndieAuth), formats (like HTML, CSS, microformats2, h-entry, h-card, h-event), frameworks, coding languages (like JS, PHP, Python, Ruby), server configuration (Apache, nginx, HTTPS), and other plumbing.

wordpress

#indieweb-wordpress channel (#wordpress in Slack)
WordPress-specific topics: Getting Started with WordPress, IndieWeb WordPress plugins, WordPress themes, general WordPress development. If a discussion becomes more generally applicable beyond WordPress, consider taking it to the #dev channel.

meta

#indieweb-meta channel (#meta in Slack)
Anything about the IndieWeb community, the infrastructure of indieweb.org, and community organizing like events: planning events, wiki gardening, wikifying, discussion about the community like reasoning/thinking behind (or evolving) principles, or about discussion channels (IRC, Slack, Loqi) / wiki, their purpose, development, bug reports, suggested improvements.

stream

#indieweb-stream channel (#stream in Slack)
Loqi reports posts that mention IndieWeb keywords in this channel. Mastodon tag feeds for the keyword "#indieweb" from mastodon.social and indieweb.social are included. There are also a number of individual blogs followed with a filter for indieweb-related keywords. You can also read the combined feed of posts at https://stream.indieweb.org

chat

#indieweb-chat channel (#chat in Slack)
Off-topic channel for discussing anything, and is not publicly logged. Even though Slack has some number of lines of scrollback, this channel is considered off the record. It is the expectation of community members that this channel remains off the record. Explicit quoting or even summarizing someone should only occur after getting explicit permission.

Related Chat Channels

Related channels often used by the community:

microformats channel

#microformats (#microformats in Slack)
Ask about microformats in general, or the process of developing a new one or new features by researching, documenting examples, brainstorming, etc.

known channel

#indieweb-known (#known in Slack)
Similar to the wordpress channel, the Known channel is for Known-specific topics (plugins, evolution, troubleshooting etc.)

Slack Users

  1. Join the IndieWeb Slack Community!
  2. Join additional channels!
    • From the desktop: click the Channels heading in the sidebar to view the other channels. Click a channel, i.e. #dev, it will show you a preview of that channel with a Join Channel button.

Search

The chat rooms (except for #indieweb-chat) can be searched at

People on IRC

Main article: chat-names

See our list of chat regulars sorted by nickname, with their website and usual timezone(s).

The channel has regular administrators, who are also wiki administrators. If you want to get their attention, just say "adminhelp".

Activity

Anecdotally the channel seems quite active:

  • 08:00-10:00 Pacific Time (-0800/-0700)
  • 16:00-18:00 UK Time (+0000/+0100)
  • 17:00-19:00 EU Time (+0100/+0200)

Differences between chat services

Each of these four options is roughly equivalent from a text perspective, though each may have features, configurations, or other niceties that differentiate them somewhat from each other.

Depending on your chat client, users from Matrix may show up with a [m] on their usernames, Discord users will have a [d] following their names, or users from Slack appear with their username in brackets. Some usernames may have the word "app" after them to indicate their content is originating from another platform. For cross-platform notifications to work on the receiving platform, one may need to include the [d] on screen names from Discord.

Some platforms, like Slack, will unfurl URLs or provide a link-preview into the chat while others will allow wiki page names pre-pended with a slash to autolink to the exact wiki webpage (eg: "/principles" in some chat platforms will link to the principles wiki page). Slack emoji responses aren't bridged to other platforms, so giving a heart or thumbs up to someone's post won't be seen unless they're also on Slack.

Keywords

People frequently in chat might like to be aware that many chat clients provide the ability to allow their users to be given real-time notifications when either their username or other specified keywords are used in individual channels. (Check the documentation of your chat client(s) for details.) This can be useful if one wants to engage in conversations around particular topics in chat.

Many organizers and project developers will have turned on notifications for keywords related to projects they're actively working on or which they support. Other community members or volunteers may have notifications for particular topics/keywords on which they're an expert and are willing to provide pointers or support. Keep in mind and be respectful of the fact that almost everyone in chat is an unpaid volunteer and we're all on different work and personal schedules as well as in different timezones. Depending on how often people are in chat and whether or not they read all the logs, Loqi can be helpful for communicating across time and space.

Using an IRC client

  1. If you're already an IRC user, setup your client with:
    • Server: irc.libera.chat
    • Port: 6697 (usually default)
  2. Join the channels above (by clicking on the chat links)

See the libera.chat connect guide if you’re having trouble connecting.

Email

There is no mailing list! 🎉

This is a deliberate decision. We encourage focusing on short discussions in chat and capturing incremental agreements/disagreements on the wiki. This also discourages long essays and repetition of arguments that can take place on email threads.

For more see:

Logs

If you prefer an email-like experience reading things in the past, see the current logs!

The source data of the logs served at chat.indieweb.org is available on GitHub.

Logs on Your iPhone Home Screen

To add the IRC logs to your iPhone home screen, visit the page below on your phone:

https://chat.indieweb.org/today?bookmark

Follow the link on that page. Then, from Safari, add that page to your home screen.

Suggestions

We have the most awesome IRC logs on the web. That doesn't mean they can't be even more awesome. Got an idea, suggestion, or issue to report about the logs? Create or comment on a GitHub issue:

Why is there no channel for X

Historically the number of channels in the IndieWeb community chat has grown organically, after documented use-cases, time for discussion, and rough consensus on new names.

From time to time we do add new channels, generally when there is a consistent level of discussion and conversation that either makes it overwhelming or potentially unwelcoming to carry on discussions related to specific topics. This is balanced against the possibility that a new chat channel would be either so quiet or infrequently used that asking questions or attempting to have a conversation there wouldn't be conducive or would result in people repeating the same question in multiple channels.

There is usually an annual conversation about adding new channels at the organizers' meeting at the IndieWeb Summit, though other conversations do happen throughout the year or can be brought up in the #indieweb-meta channel.

Brainstorming

events meetups channel

There is a desire for a new channel, for simplicity by default like nearly all other new channels, logged, indexed, with web access, for use by folks before or at events or meetups, in-person or virtual, for potentially real-time and/or rapid chat about an event or related socializing.

Discussion: this has come up most recently on 2024-03-08 and has come up a few times in chat in the past (citations would help!).

Use-cases:

  • A dedicated place to see event start and end notifications
    • 10 minutes before scheduled zoom meeting
    • a notification when the actual zoom call ends
  • ... extract more from meta chat logs 2024-03-08

Pros:

  • separate out the discussion that happens during a zoom or in-person event
    • online discussions can continue without worrying about stepping on the toes of in-person/zoom discussions
    • a place to share links during a zoom meeting where it's ok that there's no context in chat (e.g. multiple instances of a link being dropped in the chat that appears as a sequitur because there was no prior discussion in chat because the discussion was on zoom)
  • when you're in person, you often want a high signal channel to get updates on scheduling or where the group is heading after the main event, etc


Cons:

  • one more place to catch up on scrollback. (which is also a pro: easy to skim and ignore all scrollback if you aren't interested)

Prior art (other communities' channel names/purposes for events and meetups)

  • #meetup in Discord in the EH community for planning IRL meetups and coordinating when in the same town - Tantek Çelik
  • #live-stream-chat in Discord in the EH community for backchannel chat during a shared live video stream. - Tantek Çelik (more)
  • #voice-text-chat gRegor Morrill: "A Discord I'm in has a channel #voice-text-chat for when people are hanging out in the voice channel for an event. It works pretty well for dropping links, gif reactions, side-chat, and allows non-verbal people to participate." [1]
  • ...

Proposed names: (all names would have the "indieweb-" prefix in IRC and Discord, and no prefix in Slack,

web making channel

There is a growing broad spectrum of participants in the dev channel, including lots more beginner web developers who really want to learn a bit more about HTML+CSS (many recent questions) and may be (or are?) intimidated by the sometimes very deep and complex dev plumbing conversations.

Should we create a new channel that is focused primarily on (entry-level?) web makers for the curious and tinkerers who may be comfortable editing and uploading static HTML+CSS files, and maybe even using GitHub static pages to publish them, but are not interested in deep discussions of specifications, protocols, plumbing, server configuration etc.? Idea by capjamesg, roughly reworded by Tantek Çelik (blame me for any errors in description)

Examples of other communities that appeal to HTML+CSS web designers/developers (may be useful sources for naming considerations)

  • ...

Ideas for names of such a channel?

questions

  • How would we differentiate this from the current #indieweb-dev channel?
  • Should we split Category:jargon into beginner/advanced jargon to have Loqi nudge people to the appropriate channel?

FAQ

Why use Slack?

Q: Why do you use Slack? Isn't that not "indie"?

A: Slack is one way to join the chat. The canonical chat logs are at https://chat.indieweb.org Slack provides several features that some people prefer over other chat clients, so bridging to Slack lets people join and communicate using their preferred chat client.

Why use Discord?

Q: Why do you use Discord? Isn't that not "indie"?

A: Discord is one way to join the chat. The canonical chat logs are at https://chat.indieweb.org Slack provides several features that some people prefer over other chat clients, so bridging to Discord lets people join and communicate using their preferred chat client.


See Also