webmention is an indieweb standard that lets someone say "hey, i've linked to your post here". i don't particularly like or understand any of the implementations, so this isn't that. what i've made instead is a script that does literally just two things:
- validate that the URL you submit does in fact link to the post you're on
- send me an email with the URL in it
i'm calling it plebmention.
why do i want this? pure nosiness aside, i want to plug you. i think it strengthens our communities to mutually promote our ideas. one reason a lot of alterhumans are reluctant to write more high-effort pieces is because what if nobody reads them? but if you got inspired by something i said and decided to build on it, i want to reward that. i will read it, and i'll use whatever the hell kind of platform i have here to make sure other people read it too.
all you have to do is navigate to the post you referenced, find the submission box at the bottom, paste the URL of your thing in, and hit submit.
links are manually added to their pages, so it's ultimately at my discretion what's included. since the aim of this is to boost people's creative efforts, i'm likely to include polished works and unlikely to include like, reddit comments that just happen to mention the post, or link directories. i will certainly not include anything that references my works for the purpose of mockery, but i'm not opposed to well thought out disagreements with my ideas.
i'd love to make a javascript version of this that's as plug-and-play as onionring.js is so you can do this too, but that will require a little effort given that it depends on email. watch this space, i guess? in the meantime - if you liked or were inspired by something someone wrote, make an effort to tell them!