principles - IndieWeb

🗽 The IndieWeb Community is largely based on principles that we practice and aspire to, such as own your data and remember to have fun! You can read all of our guiding principles below.
The IndieWeb community also has a Code of Conduct that we uphold in all IndieWeb spaces.
Key principles of building on the indie web, numbered for reference, not necessarily for any kind of priority.
Why principles matter:
Posts about IndieWeb principles:
This article was quoted nearly verbatim in WIRED in 2013
Tweets about IndieWeb principles:
"Jeremy Keith reminds us what is most important about the world wide web. Check http://indieweb.org/principles for details." @viewsourceconf
"@adactio advocating to own your data to Take Back The Web at #webstock18 http://indieweb.org/principles" @FEDbySandrine
What I absolutely adore about the #indieweb community is that it is free of the "one true way" mentality that infects the rest of the web industry. Do what works for you, on your website! Bespoke is good!https://sonniesedge.co.uk/
"TIL: The IndieWeb Community is largely based on principles https://indieweb.org/principles. I didn't know about them, but they resonated with me.- make what you need- use what you make- document your stuff- have funand other principles" @nleonid
"👊own your data! Your content, your metadata, your identity. https://indieweb.org/principles" @moaimx
Indieweb Personal Principles:
Inspired by the community principles, some people also make a page with their guidelines for their approach to their website making.
Things we have had implicitly as IndieWeb principles/values but for one reason or another did not capture explicitly.
We often tell folks in chat etc. that the most important thing about being on the IndieWeb is having your own domain name and using it as your primary identity on the web, yet it’s not even an explicit principle. It's mentioned in the Own Your Data principle as the last in a comma delimited list, but identity isn't really "data", it's more than that, and deserves its own explicit point.
We discussed this in-person during a walk after IndieWebCamp Düsseldorf, after the last session of the day on Principles.
Proposed to add something like this:
1. ✊ Own your identity. An independent web presence starts with an online identity you own and control, the most reliable and accessible way to do this today is with your own domain name.
And make it literally the first principle, because all other aspects of independence and ownership follow from that. It's also what we have told people is the absolute minimum to be "on" or part of the "IndieWeb".
Thoughts? Suggested edits/improvements?
Long ago, in the 2010-2011 timeframe, we used to have an implicit value/principle of "show don't tell", yet somehow that never made it into the principles page.
The home page does have: "Show before tell."
This tweet expresses a direct use of this value: https://twitter.com/tmcw/status/1568966699436621825
"if you think some technology choice can make you way more productive, then just do it and show people the productivity, don't go on prattling about what other people should or shouldn't do."@tmcw September 11, 2022
Curious if it made it into any longer expositions, blog posts etc. I feel like "Show don't tell" made it into some early IndieWeb talks but I can't seem to find it.
Related tweet from Daniel Burka: https://twitter.com/dburka/status/1110111047275298817
You'll never be good at something if you never do it.
Sounds trite, but I meet a lot of UX designers who think they'll never be good at visual design. Or designers who believe they could never be writers. You might suck when you start, but the only way up is through.
Adjacent/tangential:
This section is a stub. You can help the IndieWeb wiki by expanding it.
Quite a bit of explicit and implicit methodology has gone into much of the adding and revising of the principles, which is worth documenting to help the community more broadly understand and more collectively continue to iterate and evolve the principles. Partially extracted from thoughts in the 2018/Organizers#IndieWeb_principles_split_and_reorg discussion. — Tantek Çelik
Since the principles largely started out at as developer principles, which still make sense for developers, as we rewrite/reframe the principles to be more broadly applicable, user-friendly, accessible, we should keep (and maintain) the versions that are intended for developers. — Tantek Çelik
Working on it here: developer-principles
By pulling out developer principles into a separate list, it might be possible to focus a set of core principles around the themes of identity, agency and creativity. — Paul Robert Lloyd
“when you publish HTML to a server that you control; that's fucking powerful. Autonomy and independence are central to the web. We can't forget that.”
Instagram is a public platform. We do not own it. We never will. We cannot control it. So we need to accept that.
But our blogs are OURS.We have spent years building our brands from the ground up, and it all started with our blogs. It is our very own personal space online. We control it. We decide what content goes up. We decide if we want to make changes to our website. There are no algorithms. There is no fuckery.
"Our blogs are OURS.We have spent years building our brands from the ground up, and it all started with our blogs. It is our very own personal space online. We control it. There are no algorithms. There is no fuckery." -@anouskapb cc @kevinmarks http://anouska.net/2018/02/blogging-and-why-its-important-to-bring-it-back/" @Shoq
"The best statement of #indieweb principles I've seen this year" @kevinmarks