Hey folks 👋
@simonbs recently mentioned how genuine, human blogging doesn't get the attention from The Algo's, internet's dead, etc.
I suggest a crafty countermeasure:
Swift Blog Carnival.
A host per month, setting a topic, gathering posts from the community. 🔁
To bring the community of writers together and also showcase smart people who don't have an audience.
WDYT? @mattiem @donnywals @twostraws @azamsharp @dimsumthinking @helge @natpanferova @marioguzman
I volunteer to set this up
@azamsharp "force" is a bit strong, but it'll definitely increase the variety for a shared topic!
I kickstarted April: https://christiantietze.de/posts/2026/04/swift-blog-carnival-tiny-languages/
@natpanferova I kickstarted the April issue: https://christiantietze.de/posts/2026/04/swift-blog-carnival-tiny-languages/
ask away if you have questions! Topics for upcoming months are freeform and you can volunteer to host an upcoming carnival too, of course!
@ctietze @simonbs @mattiem @donnywals @twostraws @azamsharp @helge @natpanferova @marioguzman
I tried to get Apple to consider something like this for swift.org. Imo (having done this before for Java for Sun) there needs to be a small paid staff or it quickly dies out. (Once it was successful for 5 years Sun got rid of the staff and it died out)
@ctietze @simonbs @mattiem @donnywals @twostraws @azamsharp @helge @natpanferova @marioguzman
I wrote about my vision here: https://dimsumthinking.com/Blog/2025/06/20-SwiftDotOrg.html
Not exactly what you are saying but…
@dimsumthinking @simonbs @mattiem @donnywals @twostraws @azamsharp @helge @natpanferova @marioguzman I don't agree that paid staff is needed.
For the Emacs community @sacha does this as a volunteer, solo, and it's amazing what her volunteer efforts achieved! Stewardship from engaged individuals, not paid staff that can be fired, makes this more resilient •if• it takes off.
@ctietze @dimsumthinking @simonbs @mattiem @donnywals @twostraws @azamsharp @helge @natpanferova @marioguzman https://sachachua.com/blog/2025/05/working-on-the-plumbing-in-a-small-web-community/ has my notes on some things I like to do with regard to building Emacs community. Emacs News is a linkdump sort of weekly newsletter that takes about an hour and half each week, which I've been doing for 10.5 years because it's so much fun to read about the cool stuff people do with Emacs. A lot of it comes from Planet Emacslife, an RSS aggregator that I run. I also help organize an online Emacsconf on a shoestring budget (USD 250 of hosting costs for year-round static sites plus two days of 1.5 tracks, well worth it as a way of getting stuff out of people's heads and encouraging conversation). Last year, due to various things happening, I ended up hosting the 1.5 days with mostly just one other organizer and the second afternoon all by myself, and that was still surprisingly manageable. :) The BigBlueButton server we maintain for that also gets used for hosting three meetups every month, which is a good way of keeping the infrastructure active so I don't have to re-set it up each year. I announce the meetups in Emacs Calendar, which feeds back into Emacs News. None of these pieces cost very much and the time definitely feels like fun hobby time rather than work. They're great excuses to tinker with Emacs and hang out with fascinating people. :) Emacs lends itself to automating so much stuff, so there's a lot of compounding benefit going on. Your mileage may vary if the topic is more blah.
I see there are several Swift newsletters already, so you probably have a good start. I'd be delighted to swap questions and share notes!
@ctietze @simonbs @mattiem @twostraws @azamsharp @dimsumthinking @helge @natpanferova @marioguzman
I think we have plenty of curated newsletters already, how will this be different?
Biggest issue for me right now is that the number of folks interested in reading and finding posts seems to have dropped a lot over the last half a year or so…
@donnywals @ctietze @simonbs @mattiem @twostraws @azamsharp @dimsumthinking @helge @natpanferova @marioguzman
No one is asking me but:
Too many of the newsletters have the exact same content and recently it's very AI heavy. I suspect many people are like me and just don't want to hear about AI constantly, if at all. Lately I just delete newsletters unread, hoping the hype passes soon.
No disrespect intended.
I think original, new content that wasn't all AI all the time would be welcome.
@patrickmcconnell @ctietze @simonbs @mattiem @twostraws @azamsharp @dimsumthinking @helge @natpanferova @marioguzman
Totally fair, and I can’t say I disagree.
From my POV though, its so clear that there’s very little interest in reading blogs in general these days, traffic is steadily going down every week still
@patrickmcconnell @ctietze @simonbs @mattiem @twostraws @azamsharp @dimsumthinking @helge @natpanferova @marioguzman and the content that does well is, you guessed it, very ai-related.
Probably requires a shift in mindset for folks like me but it’s been quite demotivating in terms of writing posts…
@mattiem @donnywals @ctietze @simonbs @twostraws @azamsharp @dimsumthinking @helge @natpanferova @marioguzman
I aggregate my blog reading into Tapestry app. I see the content but I have no clue if the blogs can see my traffic.
I am not a creator of this sort of content but much of it feels like it's just gaming the system to get the rewards.
For example video content that would be easier digested as text, etc. There are exceptions of course and my preference for text over video is personal
@donnywals @ctietze @simonbs @mattiem @twostraws @azamsharp @dimsumthinking @helge @natpanferova @marioguzman
I can only repond from where I sit but I'm just generally tired of the behavior of big tech, tired of creating things and releasing them into the void, tired of being too old to be considered for jobs where folks need to be young and abusable. Just tired of it all.
I remain hopeful things will recover and go in new directions but we shall see.
@donnywals I can't tell you.
Either it's for you, because you'd love to connect, come up with quirky topics and host the carnival for a month, and genuinely see what _others_ are writing, too, or maybe the blogging thing isn't doing what you really want it to :)
People change, interests change, skill changes.
It's not about traffic.
My blog traffic has stadily, slowly increased over 3y. ZK forum too.
@simonbs @mattiem @twostraws @azamsharp @dimsumthinking @helge @natpanferova @marioguzman
not exactly sure what you’re trying to say exactly here… I’d love to see what others write about, maybe I just don’t understand what the idea is. It sounded like a curated newsletter-like thing with a different host every month.
Might just have to see what it is exactly first
@simonbs @mattiem @twostraws @azamsharp @dimsumthinking @helge @natpanferova @marioguzman
@donnywals am I this old that nobody else knows what a blog carnival is? :D
Technically, it's content aggregation.
But instead of rotating the host for a newsletter, you _also_ rotate the topic all the linked blogs write about. Check out the indieweb carnival for inspiration, it's great! https://indieweb.org/IndieWeb_Carnival
March 2026 has announcement, roundup post, and soooo many linked blogs in the latter!
@simonbs @mattiem @twostraws @azamsharp @dimsumthinking @helge @natpanferova @marioguzman
Christian Tietze
Matt Massicotte
Nikhil Nigade
Mohammad Azam
Natalia Panferova
dimsumthinking
Sacha Chua
Donny Wals
Patrick McConnell