A couple of days ago, as I was writing a post about Linux, I went back to an old post of mine about Linux Mint in order to grab the URL and check a few details. As I scrolled down to the bottom, I saw a section at the very end:

WebMentions

What is a WebMention? - Send a WebMention

No WebMentions found.

And my eyes narrowed, because although I knew I had set up WebMentions, it not being something you do accidentally, it dawned on me that I could not remember the recent posts having this section at the end.

So today I’ll discuss what has happened here, and ponder if I want to actually fix it?

What Are WebMentions…?

In efforts to create networked conversations between people using different pieces of software across the internet, WebMentions are a standard to more easily link back to and respond to posts, somewhat similar to TrackBacks.

I implemented them as they were highly suggested to me, and I liked the idea of being able to create a little mini interconnected web of posts which refer and relate back to each other.

Irregular WebMentions

When I rebuilt this website, I knew there would be some posts I would not want WebMentions on, such as the About Me page, so I coded the single.html file like this to handle WebMentions:

{{ if .Params.article }}
<div class="WebMentions">
    <h4>WebMentions</h4>
    <a href="https://indieweb.org/webmentions">What is a WebMention?</a>
    -
    <a href="{{ .Site.Params.webmentionEndpoint }}?target={{ .Permalink }}">Send a WebMention</a>
    <br>
<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.6.0.min.js"></script>
<div id="webmentions-container"></div>

<script>
    $(document).ready(function() {
        var webmentionEndpoint = 'https://webmention.io/api/mentions.jf2?target=https://jessicajournals.com';

        $.getJSON(webmentionEndpoint, function(data) {
            var webmentions = data.children;

            if (webmentions.length > 0) {
                var html = '<ul>';

                webmentions.forEach(function(mention) {
                    html += '<li>';
                    html += '<a href="' + mention.author.url + '">' + mention.author.name + '</a>';
                    html += ' mentioned ';
                    html += '<a href="' + mention.url + '">' + mention.content + '</a>';
                    html += '</li>';
                });

                html += '</ul>';

                $('#webmentions-container').html(html);
            } else {
                $('#webmentions-container').html('No WebMentions found.');
            }
        });
    });
</script>
{{ end }}

The key part here is {{ if .Params.article }} at the start. All that code only activates if the parameters of the post is set to ‘article’.

I do this in the post’s front matter, which has looked something like this:

title: "Linux For Everyone?"
date: 2024-05-22
draft: false
tags: ["Linux", "WeblogPoMo2024"]
categories: ["Basement"]

Notice how there is no parameter for ‘article’. In comparison, this is the front matter for the Linux Mint post:

title: "Linux Mint"
date: 2022-04-15
draft: false
article: true
tags: ["Applications", "Setup", "Hardware", "Linux", "Mac"]
categories: ["Basement"]

Somehow, I’d simply somewhere along the way forgotten to add ‘article’ as a parameter, and thus all the posts had defaulted to article: false.

Fixing It?

Fixing this issue would be a bit time consuming, but not difficult. I just have to go through every post I want to have WebMentions on, and add article: true to the front matter.

However, do I want to have WebMentions on? Do I want to fix this issue?

Particularly writing a lot this past month as part of #WeblogPoMo2024, I quite like the idea of just writing into the abyss. One component of IndieWeb is POSSE: “Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere”, or as I incorrectly thought it stood for: “Post Once, Share and Syndicate Everywhere”. The notion is that instead of creating original content scattered across various different websites and platforms, you post it in once single place, and then share it everywhere.

But I have not been doing that, not even for an event like #WeblogPoMo2024. I think this is because I am not personally comfortable with promoting myself, making posts on Mastodon linking back to my blog posts. I have a link to this website from my Mastodon profile, and I am comfortable with that, but I don’t really want to alert my followers when I make a new post.

As to why I have these different levels of comfortability, I’m not sure. It may still link back to my mental health, as I wrote in a post a couple of years ago:

When I first started on the internet, I was extroverted, posting in various communities, making lots of online friends, and having various blogs over time. However, these all faded away over time, and as my mental health issues likely began, I withdrew more and more, telling myself no one wants to hear what I have to say, so I’ll say nothing.

I’m not sure. But regardless, I have been happily writing away without noticing any feedback, and I’m wondering about keeping it this way. Rather than go back to add article: true to the front matter, I may instead add article: false.

However, because I have not really given WebMentions a proper opportunity to shine, I have decided to turn WebMentions on for all posts that should have had it on all this time. I’ll see how this goes, and I can always go and turn them off again if I change my mind!