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@eaton

23 Jul

There are three basic ways to approach content modeling, and I'd argue that each of them have _strengths_ but no single one is philosophically correct or incorrect. Each is just a place to start.

The approach you hear about when a content architect describes ~the process~ is what I think of as "platonic content." You start with a communication or publishing concept and iron out your content types, their properties, etc. in a way that best describes their essential nature.

"We want to do interviews. What _is_ an interview, conceptually? Well, we'll need a subject, perhaps multiple subjects…" and so on.

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Actually,

@eaton

21 Jul

@beep

So, last week @beep and I had a fascinating conversation with @petermcreaper and @mkeftz about the work they're doing on @interplayapp; among other things we circled around the ideas Peter mentioned in his post about design artifacts… it's worth a read. pete.studio/notes/design-f…

@petermcreaper

@petermcreaper's thesis in that post is pretty straightforward: the intermediary design files accumulated in the process of developing a site — particularly one that's heavily component and pattern based — are disposable, temporary artifacts and not the "source of truth."

@gregddunlap

It's a thing @gregddunlap and I talked about over the years WRT content models — it's fascinating to (again!) see similarities popping up. With content, you accumulate an endless pile of spreadsheets and similar docs to iron out types, properties, relationships, and so on.

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Actually,

@eaton

7 Jul

@davereid

The concerns that nag me about the booming universe of Design Tokens are all issues @davereid and I encountered when we built and supported the Token system for Drupal. I'm still trying to suss out how much of that is "learning from experience" vs "applying the wrong lessons."

The token system for Drupal was originally conceived around '07 or so. Its ecosystem was evolving to give site builders composable pieces ("image-displayer" and "grid-display" and "pager") rather than drop-in functionality ("forum", "gallery", etc).

Around then we built one of the first large-scale production sites that used Drupal's early "click-together tools" instead of pure code: Sony/BMG Music's artist site platform, which allowed them to spin up new interactive community sites for each artist in just a couple of days.

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Actually,

@eaton

28 May

@CRightcast

While breaking down the different conceptual building blocks of modern evangelical "Purity Culture" for the next episode of @CRightcast I've come across a critical component that — weirdly enough — also appears a lot in the internet Rationalist community.

A big part of tackling complicated issues — poverty, why evil exists, why my wifi keeps dropping — is getting to root causes and patterns, rather than just focusing on the surface stuff. It's important!

Often, the process of searching for those underlying patterns can help us sort through the confusion and identify how a challenging problem can be solved.

…But that "what's REALLY going on here?" process can also be used to obfuscate, to minimize, to shift blame.

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@eaton

27 May

@CRightcast

The latest episode of @CRightcast was a very rough one to research and record. Content warnings VERY much apply for it and this thread — it covers child sexual abuse, religious abuse, and the ways some fundamentalist groups explicitly silence victims and protect abusers.

The story that prompted this departure from our Reconstructionsm series was Josh Duggar's arrest for possession of child sexual abuse materials, and the Duggar family's connection to fundamentalist teacher Bill Gothard. rightcast.substack.com/p/episode-13

Gothard and his IBLP/ATI organizations are regarded as "extreme" and "legalistic" by the most Christians, even inside the Christian Right… but his bent towards authoritarianism and rigid enforcement of patriarchal gender roles is treated as "oldschool" rather than "dangerous."

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Actually,

@eaton

26 May

@Netlify

Eavesdropping on @Netlify's Headless Commerce Summit, and there's a lot of interesting stuff happening — but it's also telling how much of the headless excitement and messaging centers on "you only have to focus on delivering the best front end experience for your end users".

SUPER COMPELLING for a FED team frustrated by tight coupling with legacy systems or services, but… for people in charge of the whole product (or teams handling that backend stuff) the challenges still gotta be solved, with the added lift of keeping the complexities hidden.

Decoupling and headless approaches can definitely deliver significant advantages — esp. for orgs that really need to use the same pipeline for many different content/interaction endpoints — but the complexity doesn't go away, only shifts around.

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