JulyReply should be the norm

As I Wrote at the start of my RE: To Blogroll, or to not? article, there is an ongoing JulyReply challenge going on. As described by Robert, who initiated the challenge, the goal is simple:

Replying to other people’s blog posts by creating an entry titled “Re: The original blog title” – just like the subject line of an email.

I like the idea because it is linked to the idea of webmentions (or the gemini equivalent geminimention). But going further, I think this should be the default bloggers’ behavior and shouldn’t be “just” a monthly challenge. I know some blogger out there are already doing this, prefering answering via their blog than commenting on social media or even by email. Sara’s blog is a great example of doing this.

The main reason for me is simple: blog posts are here to stay longer than social media, where people often remove their post. I consider posts on social media ephemeral. And I’ve always hated comments (see my post No interactions / UGC to see here…).

I’m not saying we shoudln’t reach out to fellow bloggers via email or other channels, but what I enjoy with responding via our blogs is that it helps broader the discussion. Others people will have great opinions and ideas which would enrich the discussion. Some responses might be more personal and not to share with others, in these case, direct contact might be the best. But for reflexion on more public topics would benefits from open discussions like this.

For example, I enjoyed reading Simone’s post about Leaving the web industry and I had personal feedback that I wanted to share with them. For this type of interaction, I sent an email directly, as there was no interest of sharing my thoughts on this publically.

Another example is the discussion that happened thanks to the JulyReply challenge around blogroll. I decided to “join” the discussion sharing my own thoughts about the subject. I’ve received a couple of nice reaction that indicated that people enjoy this type of interactions.

I like reading multiple opinions on most subjects as it can broader my own thoughts.

And it seems I’m not the only one thinking that. Of course the majority of people implementing webmentions seems to think like that, such as Juhis who wrote:

My ideal discussion format on the open web is through blog posts that reply to each other and reference each other – kinda like this blog post is doing. A good reply post can stand on its own, it can help readers of one blog discover other blogs and it can sprawl out to discussions between multiple people and communities across the blogosphere.

So in summary, keep replying to each other even after the JulyReply challenge, it helps growing the small indieweb community in a fun and interactive way!