often for small-scale websites and apps what you want is:
- a participatory are for anyone to be able to add data to
- a way for you (the website creator) to filter and moderate these responses
This mirrors the dynamics of what happens when you are a host in real life. When you host an event, you invite people to come because it’d be no fun by yourself. The contract that they sign by coming is that they agree to your ground rules and follow (roughly) the guidelines and plan you’ve made for the event. These vary in rigidity and take shape as a result of the dynamics between the host and the guests, but ultimately, it is a relationship where many decisions are made by the host, who is de-facto in charge.
For websites, this is really hard to do. Any personal site you look at will most likely be completely individual. I don’t think this is for a lack of trying or motivation. One of the best parts of having a cozy home is being able to invite people in. Instead, this is the landscape of the internet because the amount of effort required to invite people in at all is incredibly difficult (to the point of being impossible for most people with personal websites). To create an environment where you can even begin to think about this, you have to set up some sort of database to hold your “user data” and some sort of server that your client talks to to talk to the database in order to avoid leaking credentials to people visiting your website, both of which are very involved processes.
I imagine a world where these capabilities are available to anyone who uses a computer or a phone. I think it should be as simple to set up a home on the internet as it is to customize your home when you move into a new apartment.
There have been clever attempts to address this problem through
- stable files through website hosts like Glitch, where you can directly access and edit the file, and it persists to the hosting server.
- leveraging spreadsheet-like interfaces like Coda and Airtable for append-only data through using the API or forms.
Ideally, you’d be able to control the behavior both programmatically and manually from somewhere you have easy access to (for small things ideally on your phone)
maybe something hyper-optimized for a specific host and all you do is give it an identifier and it automatically does append-only
<form onSubmit={} data=- how to specify where data should be sourced from?
- how to specify where data should go?
- how to specify how data should be appended?
- #ideas/writing/newsletter how to be a website host
- most of the web we encounter today is a nameless, faceless website. We’ve grown to become suspicious of polished websites because we think that huge companies are behind them
- on the other hand, when you see something made with wacky layouts, hand-picked images, custom animations and font choices, you automatically feel safer. you feel like you’re visiting someone. These often feel like looking into someone’s home from the outside—You can see everything but not touch
- Starbucks vs. local coffee shop
- Increasingly more of these sites are becoming participatory. You can move things around! You can comment. Maybe you can even change the face of the website or leave your cursor trail.
- With these sites, the role of the website host becomes apparent. In the previous iteration, they just needed to accept putting themselves on display, but once things become participatory, a contract that governs interaction emerges between visitors and the creator
- What does it mean to host one of these websites? What does it mean to welcome people in and provide a contract of interaction? How do you make a participatory website in this way?