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repost

♺ A repost on the indieweb is a post that is purely a 100% re-publication of another post. The act of reposting is an umbrella term that covers the general practice of republishing another post typically on the same service or silo, but more and more across sites.

Many silos including Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, SoundCloud and Google+ implement reposting — see Silo Examples

Perhaps the oldest form of reposting is the act of "reblogging" someone else's blog post, which typically consists of copying an entire blog post article from one site to another, keeping it intact, and not adding anything except perhaps a "reblogged from ___" bit of text at the start and/or end linking to the original from which it was reblogged.

(need screenshots of this in the wild, what a reblog looks like, what's the UX flow to reblog something)

Contents

Why

Why implement reposting:

  • Retweet from your own site. Incrementally supporting reposts, especially with POSSE to Twitter, enables you to "retweet" from your own site, rather than depending on Twitter to do so.
    • This in turn ensures a copy of anything you retweet on your own site, in case the original is deleted/removed etc.
  • ...

How to Publish

Use class="u-repost-of" to indicate that the URL being linked to is what is being reposted, for example: 

<span class="h-entry"> ... 
 <a class="u-repost-of" href="http://someothersite.example.com/permalink47">...</a>
</span>

demonstrates an h-entry for a "repost" of http://someothersite.example.com/permalink47. As with replies and likes, let the reposted URL know that you’ve linked to it by sending a webmention.

Why not u-repost?

  • The trailing preposition "of" helps communicate this in the same that we have u-in-reply-to instead of u-reply, and u-like-of instead of u-like.
  • This frees up "u-repost" (and "p-repost") to actually indicate that the URL being linked is a repost itself (e.g. similar to "p-comment").

Brainstorming Markup

Reposts carry a lot of data (all of the original post's traits + all the repost's traits). How can we mark them up so that all that data is captured?

Ideally we would provide reasonable fallbacks for consumers that don't know about reposts. This is made more problematic because readers' ideal fallback (full content of the original post) is different than webmention receivers' ideal fallback (something like "reposted this.").

Here's a slightly simplified example from kylewm.com. 

<article class="h-entry">
  <div class="e-content p-name">
    <div class="u-repost-of h-cite">
      <a class="p-author h-card" href="http://werd.io/profile/benwerd">
        Ben Werdmüller
      </a>
      <div class="e-content p-name">            
        <p>IPFS would be a good thing for the Internet. Amber Case explains: <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/04/why-the-internet-needs-ipfs-before-its-too-late/">http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/04/why-the-internet-needs-ipfs-before-its-too-late/</a></p>
      </div> <!-- .e-content .p-name -->
      <a class="u-url" href="http://werd.io/2015/ipfs-would-be-a-good-thing-for-the-internet-amber"><i class="fa fa-retweet"></i> Reposted from werd.io</a>
    </div> <!-- .u-repost-of .h-cite -->
  </div> <!-- .e-content .p-name -->
  <a class="u-url u-uid" href="https://kylewm.com/2015/10/repost-of-ben-werdmu-ller-ipfs-would-be-a-good-thing">
    <time class="dt-published" datetime="2015-10-06T16:58:29-07:00">
      4:58pm PDT
  </time></a>
</article>

How to Display

Best practices for how to display a repost are still being worked out.

See: Challenges: Display below.

See: 2014 Repost session: repost presentation for some sketches of possible repost presentation.

IndieWeb Examples

Sandeep Shetty

Sandeep Shetty has been posting reposts on sandeep.io since at least 2013-06-04. Examples:

Barry Frost

Barry Frost has been experimenting with using u-repost for reposts since at least ????-??-??, example?

Barnaby Walters

Barnaby Walters manually reposted Getting Started With microformats2 on microformats.org using WordPress and u-repost-of markup on 2014-03-05. Example(s):

Ryan Barrett

Ryan Barrett uses WordPress to and the IndieWeb Press This bookmarklet to repost tweets and POSSE retweets since at least 2014-04-21. Examples:

Kyle Mahan

Kyle Mahan has been posting reposts on kylewm.com since at least 2014-06-10. Example:

Aaron Parecki

Aaron Parecki has been posting reposts on his website since 2014-10-29. Examples:

Amy Guy

Amy Guy has been able to post reposts since 2015-04-07, listed at /shares Eg:

Proto-repost examples

The following IndieWeb examples resemble reposts in appearance but are actually other simpler kinds of posts.

Tantek

Tantek Çelik has occasionally posted pseudo-retweets to tantek.com as notes, e.g.:

And a manual photo repost from Instagram, with additional prepended text.

Commons Examples

Quitter se

Kyle Mahan using an account on Quitter.se, reposted a note from Tantek Çelik:

Services

Bridgy

Bridgy sends webmentions for Facebook and Google+ reshares and Twitter retweets, as reposts. It uses class="u-repost u-repost-of" to support both the established property name and the earlier, experimental property name.

Projects

Publify

Publify is a project for hosting your own content / site.

Publify displays reposts using the original tweet data. Current used information are:

  • Original author URL (in case it exists in the tweet) or link to the Twitter account.
  • Original author profile picture
  • Original message
  • A link to the original message with the date and time of post.

Additional information are provided regarding the repost:

  • Date and time of the repost.
  • Author of the repost
  • Short permalink to the POSSEd content.

From a visual point of view, the reposted message is displayed like most blockquotes, to enforce the citation impression.

publify-retweet.png

From a markup point of view:

  • the reposted message is enclosed inside a blockquote.
  • the whole status is a h-entry
  • the short permalink has rel="syndication"

Sessions

IndieWebCamp sessions where reposts were discussed:

Differentiating Reposts

Quote vs. Repost

For me reposting is about saying this entire post is interesting (http://www.sandeep.io/35) while quoting (quotation) is about curating just the relevant parts (http://www.sandeep.io/27). So this implies a UX difference. With quoting (which is just a regular post) I highlight the curated "text" (with blockquote) while with reposting I highlight a post (by showing the author, title, summary, dt-published, etc.) - Sandeep Shetty

Like vs Repost

A repost is different from like in that a like is about me liking something personally (subjective value) while a repost is about something I think will be valuable to people that follow/subscribe to my site (objective value). Liking is an emotional response (feeling). - Sandeep Shetty

Displaying reposts of

Main article: reposts

When a post receives a webmention from a repost, it can choose to display it similar to a favoriting/liking of that post, as well as optionally displaying a number of reposts, or icons of recent reposters.

See reposts for more specifics.

Silo Examples

Twitter

Twitter uses their silo specific term "retweet" for a repost, the action of posting a repost, and thus present "retweeting" and past "retweeted" verb tenses as well.

On Twitter, retweeted statuses are displayed with the original author's information in the activity stream of the reader.

Modern (2014-11-06) example screenshot of a Twitter retweet:

2014-11-06-twitter-in-stream-repost.png

This in-stream Twitter retweet presentation consists of:

  • a green-background white-foreground retweet icon, followed inline by
  • "Aaron Parecki" (the display name of the person who retweeted the post) followed inline by
  • the word "retweeted" (presumably localized to the reader's preferred language), both in smaller gray text compared to the rest of the information in the retweet.

Below that, the original tweet appears identical to how it appears on the original author's timeline, except

  • if the retweeter is the logged-in viewer of the webpage, then
    • the retweet icon (between the reply and favorite icons) below the original tweet appears in green, indicating that the logged-in viewer has retweeted that tweet.

2014-08-29 retweet in stream

2014-08-29-retweet.png

In stream, Twitter shows the original author of the retweeted Tweet as normal, and includes text above saying "retweeted by {name}". Only the display name of the person who retweeted is shown, not the Twitter username. This can lead to confusion when reading your stream since you may not know how a tweet appeared them if you don't recognize the person's display name.

2014-06-28 retweet in stream

2014-06-28-retweet.png

2013 retweet in stream

Previously, retweets in streams of the retweeter looked like:

2013-08-16-retweet.png

The Most Reposted Thing

On 2014-03-02, Ellen DeGeneres, with the help of Bradley Cooper, took a "selfie" with her mobile device and posted it on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/TheEllenShow/status/440322224407314432
If only Bradley's arm was longer. Best photo ever. #oscars
BhxWutnCEAAtEQ6.jpg

That tweet became the most measurably reposted thing (beat Barack Obama's most shared tweet around the 2012 elections), with over 3.4 million reposts as of 2014-04-02 (one month). See additional references[1], including animated GIF of the taking of the selfie[2]

3166a050-a28b-11e3-a16f-a394e4559bf0_ellengroupselfie.gif

Tumblr

Tumblr has a notion of "reblogging", which Tumblr users tend to take reblogging quite seriously — for example it is bad form to reblog a post as a new tumblr post even if you're linking back to the original [3]

Tumblr reblog UX as of 09/03/14: Post appears in user's dashboard. User clicks reblog button in bottom right corner of post. tumblrreblog1.png

Reblog window is presented showing original content and allowing user to add comment in text box. Text box can switch from WYSIWYG to HTML. Text box also shows previous comments in it in successive blockquotes. It is possible to edit or remove this content and it will be displayed that way in the reblogging user's reblog post. While this is possible it's considered bad form to edit previous content. Tags can also be added to the reblog post. Tags are not carried over from the post that is being reblogged. tumblrreblog2.png

The post is then displayed in the users dashboard as a reblog and is visible in the dashboards of those following the reblogger: tumblrreblog3.png

Tumblr reblog persistence

A Tumblr reblog post is a copy of the original, thus even if the original is deleted, the reblog copy remains, and still refers to the (now deleted) permalink of where it was reblogged from. This is in contrast to Twitter retweets, where if the original is deleted, all the retweets disappear as well (because all they are are redirects to the original permalink, conversely the new "retweet with comment" will show the comment and a dead link preview).

Example:

Facebook

Facebook has a notion of "share" - which means repost someone else's post.

Screenshots needed of:

  • "share" UI (button? link? menu? in context of what posts?)
  • "shared" post permalink and analysis of presentation
  • "shared" post in stream and analysis of presentation

Google+

GooglePlus has a share UI that enables reposting of someone else's G+ post:

plusshare.png

This gives a posting UI that allows a top comment to be added and a choice of circles to share to:

plusshareposting.png

The shared post is indicated like this:

plusshareresult.png

Repost.us

repost.us was a verb silo, hosting buttons and a UI for reposting articles which provided an HTML+JS snippet to embed on your own site. Example repost UI (seen once the "repost" button is clicked). Site is offline as of July 31, 2014


Cross-silo Examples

Because many silos allow for automatic cross-posting to other silos, many of them also cross-post local reposts!

Twitter to Facebook

A retweet on Twitter, auto-cross-posted by Twitter to Facebook:


This is particularly awkward when you compare what a Twitter to Facebook retweet cross-post looks like with a Twitter to Facebook tweet cross-post:


Challenges

The biggest challenge with repost is that currently it's something which is native to silo for silo posts, and nothing more. It's a challenge, because it's not clear how it makes sense in a cross-site manner.

What's the difference between a repost and just quoting/citing another article in full?

  • If it's no different, then we shouldn't invent a new term for it.
  • E.g. it's not "reposting" it's just just posting and quoting.
  • If it's no different, then don't invent a new term for it. No distinction = does not deserve it's own term, per minimalism and simplicity principles.
  • tumblr allows users to comment on a post they reblog. If this is done in microformats, does the original content go in the content area of the new post or does it go in the reply-context?

Display

See Twitter's retweet example for one way to display a repost in stream.

How should an indieweb repost be best displayed?

  • In stream?
  • On its permalink?

See related IndieWebCamp 2014 brainstorming session in NYC: IndieWeb Reposts

In particular:

How should a repost of a repost be displayed?

  • Should a repost of a repost show only the original post author, or also the intermediate repost author as well?

What about a repost of a repost of a repost?

  • Should a repost of ... a repost show all intermediate repost authors? A repost chain?

See Also

Retrieved from "https://indiewebcamp.com/repost"