Reply to Dale’s comment on my IndieWeb post

Yesterday, I shared my article There’s no membership card for IndieWeb and got the following comment from Dale:

Great article, I agree 99%.

I do take issue, however, with your spiel that the IndieWeb is a recursive effort to ultimately converge everybody towards a set of ideas. I think it extremely important to the definition of an independent web that people can overtly diverge from the direction of the herd: be creative outside the box, be innovative, and, most of all, be brave and ground-breaking. Only then can the indie web grow and expand its boundaries.

My own definition of a personal web site is one on which one person has the agency to do anything at all with the site without recourse to others. That does not preclude use of such systems as Wordpress, on proviso that the person using such system could in principle move off it--effectively being able to break the walls.

https://khleedril.org/blog/comment/xclloh.html

We don’t disagree here at all.

I don’t think IndieWeb is “a recursive effort to ultimately converge everybody towards a set of ideas”. I apologise if my communication was lacking on that part. First of all, I don’t think everybody is the target of IndieWeb. I’m not even sure if I agree with the “converge [ - - ] towards a set of ideas part”. To encourage an adoption of certain ideas, sure. But not converge in a sense that these would be the only right things.

I also don’t think that the ideas or principles shared within IndieWeb community should be in any way a limiting set of ideas. Being creative outside the box and doing what you want for your site is exactly what I wish people do. I think IndieWeb — with its current definition, the definition that Belvadi proposed or the ideas I shared — encourages that a lot. IndieWeb is all about building new things. All I’m proposing is that we lower the floor of requirements even more than what it is by transforming the idea from a community to set of ideas.

As I wrote in my original post that I referenced, I made the case that it’s very difficult to draw a specific line on what is “IndieWeb enough” and mentioned:

I want IndieWeb to be and to remain an open community where people can decide to be part of, regardless of how their website is built or hosted. I want the community to be inspiring and aspirational with its ideas and technical possibilities rather than limiting or gatekeeping.

I have no problem with someone hosting their site on WordPress being part of IndieWeb. Zero.

I do however want to specify something. You mentioned “definition of a personal web site” while I was specifically speaking of a subset of the community that we call IndieWeb. I don’t think every site — even personal site — needs to have anything to do with IndieWeb ideas to be valid or accepted in the web.

I feel like my point is exactly in line with what you commented: I don’t think there should be any requirements to fulfill or a checklist to fill before you’re “in”.