challenges

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Challenges refer to obstacles, problems, or barriers that individuals face with setting up, using, and/or maintaining indieweb sites and their projects.

If you are looking for challenge posts which are a prompt to post something about a particular topic, usually at some frequency (like once a day) for some duration, see:

• challenge

Why

As more and more of us make strides on our indieweb sites and projects, it may help to keep track of challenges and difficulties, both that we ourselves encounter even as we make progress, and by those who either gave up on their indieweb sites, or find current challenges insurmountable.

Citations Needed

To minimize handwaving and theoretical complaints, we should keep this page focused on documenting challenges that are serious enough that those encountering them have written about them openly on the web, providing citations thereto.

Document challenges by the year they're written about. Noting their timeframe will help us understand them in a historical context, especially as old challenges are overcome, and new challenges are encountered.

Citations to process

If you find articles that are either IndieWeb criticisms or silo apologies, please add them to the end of this list:

• https://medium.com/writers-on-writing/9ad16e70af15
• http://datahiveconsulting.com/2014/04/10/indiewebify-me-and-the-knowledge-gap/
• https://kevq.uk/removing-support-for-the-indieweb/
• https://lipu.dgold.eu/praxis-indieweb.html
  • https://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2021/02/on-indieweb.html
• Social Media Isn’t Going to Save You From Social Media

  IndieWeb is an interesting movement, but it’s hard to find mentions of it outside of hippie tech circles. I think even just the way their “Getting Started” page is presented is an enormous barrier. A layperson’s eyes will 100% glaze over before they need to scroll. There is a lot of weird jargon and in-joking. I don’t know how to fix that either. Even as someone with a reasonably technical background, there are a lot of components of IndieWeb that intimidate me.

  (inline links from original)
  • The new home page project will/should help solve some Getting Started challenges, likely enough to greatly simplify the Getting Started page itself. -— Tantek Çelik 17:16, 20 May 2021 (PDT)
  • selfdogfood("weird jargon") is problematic as a term/phrase, for many reasons, and while not technical jargon, is still OSS jargon of a sort and thus we've replaced it as a principle with eat what you cook. That being said, there are likely many pages that still say "selfdogfood" that need copy editing and need relinking. — Tantek Çelik 17:16, 20 May 2021 (PDT)
  • backfeed("components") needs a more approachable and user-desirable definition that provokes a sense of the benefites of backfeed, staying in touch with responses from your friends on social media. — Tantek Çelik 17:16, 20 May 2021 (PDT)
  • ... other points to process?
• ...

Feel free to take an article from the list, analyze it for specific critical/challenge points, and:

• if the points are false, document FAQs for them
• if the points are true, document them below by year

Incoming criticism

Roughly by time order of criticism, add new entries to the bottom:

• Praxis and Indieweb
  Daniel Goldsmith Dec 24, 2019 https://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/gw?ascraeus.org/0/phlog/041.txt

• Removing IndieWeb WordPress Plugins
  Khürt Williams 29 Feb, 2020; https://islandinthenet.com/removing-indieweb-wordpress-plugins/

• Indieweb is so damn confusing.
  @amolith April 13, 2020; https://social.nixnet.services/@amolith/103992011044675243

• Anyway detrans twitter fam, time to learn about the indie web, sorry this website is so confusing, it's worth it: https://indieweb.org/
  @livejournalmad1 June 30, 2020; https://twitter.com/livejournalmad1/status/1277781337890422784

• 2020-04-11 Implementing The IndieWeb Into My Website, see subsequent disappointment & removal:
  • 2020-11-13 Removing Support For The IndieWeb also at Kev Quirk: https://kevq.uk/removing-support-for-the-indieweb/

• On the Indieweb
  Stephen Downes February 11, 2021; https://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2021/02/on-indieweb.html

• Indieweb frustrations
  x28 February 12, 2021; https://x28newblog.wordpress.com/2021/02/12/indieweb-frustrations/

• It’s a big hassle.
  Wouter Groeneveld 9 March, 2021; https://brainbaking.com/post/2021/03/the-indieweb-mixed-bag/

• Need to simplify Getting Started and perhaps add a very minimal (one sentence?) summary of "What is IndieWeb" conceptually at the top which directs people to the home page etc. for more details.
  @Macroz, May 19, 2021

• @dianoetic I had my first cursory read of the contents now. I feel a bit overwhelmed by all the details (like setting up "metadata" in the form of the "h-stuff" and such). Not exactly a one pager of the concept.So if I understood correctly I should set up my own site, and link my presence from "silos" to it and back. Post content there. Site must include the agreed "metadata".Not sure of the benefits this gives others today. But I feel like I could add my small presence to the web again.
  @Macroz May 19, 2021; https://fosstodon.org/@Macroz/106263096549083013

• 2022-08-13 Will the IndieWeb Ever Become Mainstream?

  …the IndieWeb is really complicated to implement, so it will only ever appeal to developers.
  …
  There’s just so much to add in terms of markup, post types and front-end work to display it all, the whole thing gets messy, quick.
  …
  Overall I think the IndieWeb is a great idea on the surface, but it has been poorly implemented.

• 2024-03-21 W. Evan Sheehan: The IndieWeb is for Developers

  With the exception of the first and last principles—and possibly the penultimate principle—these are all developer-focused principles.

See Also

• to-do
• principles
• projects
• why
• challenge (goal prompt)