Earlier this month, John Johnston wrote about his experience with student podcasting:
We are trying to give our class motivation to practise their talking, listening, reading and writing. Communication with their peers and an audience. For me simple podcasting provides a great opportunity for that.
via John Johnston
I think this is terrific – more teachers should use podcasting as a technique to increase literacy skills.
Simon Willison’s recent talk at Django 2022 (Comping strategies for the serial project hoarder) is fascinating! His proposal is to ensure that every project has comprehensive documentation and automated tests. I am going to seriously look into this! (via Roland Tanglao)
Lazyweb followup – After some testing with opmlPackage, I figured out that I needed to get the OPML of my Zettelkasten file using this URL and then selecting View Source and copying. Once I did that, I was able to process it using Pandoc.
I couldn’t leave a comment on the reallySimple repo for clouddemo.js (it appears to be locked), so I am writing a blog post. I was able to run the app on port 443 and successfully register a WordPress.com site and a WordPress.org site using version 0.5.0 of the WordPress RSS Cloud plugin. When I ran my separate test script on the WordPress.org site, it worked, but I figured out that the WordPress.org site is caching the RSS feed, which explains why feed updates were not seen by FeedLand.
The code for clouddemo.js looks good, I am pleased that it could run on port 443, since I already had an app running on port 80 on my server and did not want to change it.
Lazyweb request – I tried converting my OPML Zettelkasten file into Markdown using Pandoc, but got an “Invalid XML” error, because I have URLs within the outline elements. Any suggestions for fixing this? I am looking at opmlToJs to get the OPML in JSON, then use sanitize-html to escape the URLs, then write it back out using opmlToJs. Other suggestions welcome!
I was able to confirm this morning that rssCloud support in FeedLand worked for my WordPress.com test site – hurray! Many thanks to Andrew Shell and Dave Winer for working things out, along with support from Joseph Scott at Automattic. Joseph Scott released a new version of the RSS Cloud plugin today for WordPress.org sites, I did an initial test, but FeedLand did not get a rssCloud update from my test site. I got some debug ideas from Joseph Scott, working on those now.
Update: I figured out that Gary Teter’s post I referenced on December 10 was not deleted from the FeedLand user view, so looks like it was my post that brought in the comment guidelines. I apologize for the error.
Update: I figured out that Gary Teter’s post I referenced on December 10 was not deleted from the FeedLand user view, so looks like it was my post that brought in the comment guidelines. I apologize for the error.
I have been following the development of FeedLand, a new feed reader application from Dave Winer. I have used many of the tools that Dave has developed over the years. One cost of using his tools is figuring out how to navigate a web of sometimes unclear expectations on support forums/repos. For the Drummer application, it was made clear that problems related to Drummer were acceptable, but that was about all that was allowed.
Recently, Dave Winer added two new features to FeedLand – a way for a user to make short posts and create a RSS feed, and a collected view/river of user posts. I took a look at the feature yesterday, and decided to make a short post comparing this experience in FeedLand to an app I use for reading posts by Drummer users who blog using the Old School blogging tool. Here is the text of the post:
In response to Ken Smith’s comment on the Read user feeds feature in FeedLand, this is the sense of community that the Old School Drummers river has as well. However, with the ability to post new items as you read them, thee feedback loop tightens…which is a good thing…which is like Twitter/Mastodon…hmmmm…
Post on FeedLand feed
A little later, I decided to check to see if anyone had responded. What I found was my post in the user post view was deleted (the post was still present in my RSS feed), and this post was now at the top of the view:
I should’ve done this from the start, but I didn’t want to start off on a negative note. I’ve been hosting discussion groups on the net since the beginning and these days spam and abuse start pretty soon, and there’s no negotiating with it, you need clear rules and no tolerance.
So you have to have a policy ready, and I do — they’re called the Comment Guidelines, and they apply here. They’re easy to follow for most people, and we need them to protect against spam and abuse.
I’ll include a customized version in the Docs menu, soon. 😉
Wow (I thought to myself)! What was wrong with this? I decided to sleep on it and approach it fresh in the morning. I read through the “Comment Guidelines”, I think my item fell in the “No Spam” category (It’s not a place for you to promote your products, services, blog, initiatives, political causes. Don’t post spam. ) and the “No blog posts” category (2 sentences could be a blog post, I guess). Later this morning, I saw a post by Gary Teter that it appeared he had also fallen prey to deletion:
Apparently FeedLand’s “my feed” isn’t actually my feed, and is intended just for making comments about FeedLand. So I guess I will have to come up with some other way to make quick posts to the blog part from my phone. Disappointed.
As a proud union member who does not cross picket lines, turning off the New York Times feeds at the root level of FeedLand feels like the Musk approach. Unsubscribing from them on your own feed seems better to me. If there’s a social aspect to using FeedLand, it is users following each other’s curation judgments. Not the owner of the platform using the platform itself to express personal judgments.
It appears that the second paragraph of this quote was the offending post.
So – where was the guidance of what to post and what not to post? I looked at the FeedLand Change Notes blog, and found the post on creating a user RSS feed and the first post on the User Feed View feature. There was where I found the key phrase:
The rules of decorum apply here. There will be ways to block people, that’s inevitable. Feel free to discuss the product. Do not get personal, do not give anyone orders. Remember we’re here to have fun and make something new!
from FeedLand Change notes blog
So – read between the lines – this “user feed view” is a Dave Winer site, and is governed by the comment guidelines for his regular blog. I think Gary Teter said it best:
Apparently FeedLand’s “my feed” isn’t actually my feed, and is intended just for making comments about FeedLand. …Disappointed.
Apparently Gary Teter has also fallen prey to deletion in FeedLand…
