Table of Contents
Ever since I’ve discovered the personal web, I’ve been following [more and more](https://kedara.eu/thank-you-for-…
Table of Contents
Ever since I’ve discovered the personal web, I’ve been following more and more personal websites in my feed reader. To make sense of it all, I first tried to organise my feeds by topic. It quickly became obvious to me that this wouldn’t work: most personal websites don’t fit one particular niche and I think that’s a beautiful thing.1
My next approach was to only organise feeds by language. This made the choice of how to categorise a website relatively easy (with a few bilingual exceptions). However, because I’m now following 255 feeds, dividing those only into “English” or “Dutch” didn’t make much of a difference in terms of reducing the overwhelm.
There are two “problems” I’m trying to solve here:
- Differences in prolificacy: some people post three small updates per day, others one large essay every other month. The more prolific writers quickly fill up my feed, while the less frequent posters are drowned out.
- Reducing the overwhelming feeling of the Unread counter: I can’t read everything – I do read everything written by my favourite writers, but I still want to be able to follow others as well.
In order to solve this, I started brainstorming about what different types of websites exist and how they could be organised. This made me think of an analogy I love: viewing a website as a digital garden, where you plant new posts, let them grow and weed them from time to time. There’s more to this: while personal websites can be thought of as gardens, social media is a stream and group chats (or blogs for some) are campfires. This led me to the question: what analogy from gardening can be used to organise digital subscriptions?
Using permaculture principles to bring order to chaos
One answer to that question, which works for me so far, is based on the zones used in permaculture. In a nutshell, six different zones are defined based on how frequently they are visited. The gist of how these zones work, is that the closer the areas are to your home, the more often you’ll likely visit them. The areas that you’re prone to visit more often, should have a function that you’ll want to use more often. This principle can be used to efficiently organise your plot: your cooking herbs should be closer to your home than your larger vegetable garden, for example. Beyond that – if you’re blessed with a large garden – is the orchard, which you visit a few times a week. You rarely go to the far end of the garden and it may grow wild.
I loved the idea of these zones and found that they can also be used to organise the feeds I subscribe to very well. I came up with a list of six zones to use for this particular purpose:
- Zone 0: “Home” – own feeds, close friends/family
- Zone 1: “Porch” – favourites, must reads
- Zone 2: “Backyard” – usually good stuff
- Zone 3: “Orchard” – visited less frequently
- Zone 4: “Pasture” – skim once in a while
- Zone 5: “Pond” – let it sink, dredge occasionally
Before discussing each zone in more detail, I have to say the garden analogy really helps me to decide where a given website belongs. Do I want to hang out with them on my porch? Or maybe I’d like to meet them in the backyard first, before inviting them closer to my home? If there’s only the occasional post I’d like to read, I’ll plant the feed in the orchard. Or put it out to pasture in Zone 4, if it turns out I’d like to check on it just once in a while. Finally, there’s the pond, where I add feeds I’m a bit on the fence about, but would like to keep tabs on anyway. This I can dredge occasionally, which means I’ll unsubscribe from feeds that turn out to be not for me.
The system is flexible: I can easily move a feed to a different zone, if that’s where it fits better. It also scales well: the first two zones, which contain the websites that I don’t want to miss out on, are less heavily populated than the zones farther away from Home. This solves the two problems I mentioned earlier:
- My favourite writers are not “drowned out” by other frequent posters: they reside close to my Home zone. Some of my favourite writers are prolific as well, but because the Porch is less heavily populated than, for example, the Orchard, I can easily keep up with them and the rest of the Porch-crowd.
- The Unread counts of Zones 0-2 are typically low – at least much lower than the sum of all zones. This makes me feel less fear of missing out on the good stuff.
How to get started with this system
Getting started is quite easy, but I’ll share some lessons I’ve learned while using this system. Obviously, the first step is to create the categories in your program of choice. I’d recommend using the following naming pattern: “Z0: Home”, “Z1: Porch”, etc. This keeps the names relatively short, easy to sort alphabetically and it gives you a reminder of the general feeling associated with the given zone.
Next, you’ll want to add some feeds to the new categories, of course. Don’t try to do it all at once, think of it as a gradual transition to the new system. To already get some of the benefits early on, start by adding your favourite writers to your Porch. If you have close friends or family that you could add to your feed reader, go ahead and put them in your Home zone. Then, depending on your previous system, distribute the preexisting categories over the remaining zones. But don’t make the mistake of putting all feeds initially into one zone, like I did. It’s better to make a temporary “Uncategorised” category if there’s no clear mapping from your old categories to the new ones. In that way, you’ll know which feeds you’ve assigned consciously to a zone already. Then, weed and replant gradually over time.
In a feed reader
In my feed reader, I’ve configured all zones to also be included on the “Unread” page, except for the Pasture and the Pond. In this way, I can get a quick glimpse of the most recent articles, before checking each of the zones in ascending order. If you follow even more feeds than I do, you may want to exclude more zones from the initial “Unread” page (or the equivalent in your feed reader software).
For the Home zone, I’ve included the feeds of my own websites (this one and its Dutch sibling), just so that I can easily spot any errors if when I mess up the feeds. There’s also one feed by a close friend (hi!); sadly I don’t know many bloggers in person. My Porch is a bit more densely populated though, but I keep its occupation limited. My goal is to be able to easily keep up with it. If it becomes to much, I’ll assess who I can nicely ask to step of the Porch into the Backyard instead. Finally, simply keep tending the system over time. If I don’t have a clear initial impression, I’ll add new feeds to the Orchard and give them time to grow on me.
On the Fediverse, there’s even more of a “fire hose” feeling than in my feed reader. Therefore, I’ve made all of the zones exclusive: they’re not included in my Home feed (this is the Fediverse Home feed I’m talking about – not the Home zone. Sorry for the confusion). I’m using Moshidon as my app of choice; I’ve set up the order of the timelines as follows: Z1: Porch (Z0: Home is currently empty for me on GoToSocial) up to Z4: Pasture, Fediverse Home Feed, Z5: Pond, Fediverse Local Feed, Fediverse Federation Feed. I’ve included the “Fediverse Home Feed” before the Pond, because I haven’t added all my contacts to a list yet. Currently, I’m more likely to want to read the “Fediverse Home Feed” compared to the Pond, but if that changes, I can easily reorder the timelines in the app.
The annoying thing is that you can only add people to a list when you’re actually following them. This doesn’t sound like much of an issue, but in practice it is: people who have turned on manual approval of their followers can only be added to a list, after you’ve been approved. Also, sometimes there’s a delay in following people who haven’t turned on manual approval of followers. As a result, a lower percentage of people I follow on the Fediverse are added to one of the zones, compared to the feeds in my feed reader. Therefore, I’m still checking the Fediverse Home Feed quite often. But overall, it has reduced the overwhelm by quite a bit and I can more easily keep up with the people on the Porch and in the Backyard.
A recap of the zones
I thought it may be helpful to briefly recap the zones and describe the general feeling of each of them in a few sentences. I’ve found this really helps me to know where each person or feed belongs.
Zone 0: Home
The Home zone is for checking the correct functioning of my own feeds and for following people I know personally and care about deeply: family or close friends. Those people you’d happily welcome into your home for an evening.
Zone 1: Porch
The Porch is where I invite my favourite writers. I read every single article of the Porch crowd, even if the title at first seems unappealing (they almost never disappoint!). The Porch isn’t too spacious: this ensures I can keep up with everyone here.
Zone 2: Backyard
In the Backyard, I hangout with the blogs I enjoy. I like most of their posts, but don’t feel the immediate need to read absolutely everything. They’re very nice people though and I’d say I’m interested in reading most of their articles. There’s a bit more space here compared to the Porch, but it’s cosy enough not to get lost.
Zone 3: Orchard
The Orchard is larger and grows a little wilder than the Backyard. It contains blogs I’ve just discovered and planted here because I’d like to get to know them. Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees (or maybe in this case, the other way round) because it’s more densely populated. Here, I judge a post by its title more often than in the preceding zones closer to home.
Zone 4: Pasture
The Pasture is larger still than the Orchard, but less densely populated. It contains the feeds I’d like to skim occasionally. I read maybe one in every three posts, if the title seems promising. I check it every once in a while, so I can invite writers closer to home or send them to the Pond as necessary.
Zone 5: Pond
The Pond is the final zone: the posts here sink to the bottom of my “to read” pile. Its occupants are feeds I’d like to skim once in a blue moon. I dredge the pond somewhat regularly and remove the feeds I no longer wish to keep tabs on. I make it a rule to only unsubscribe from feeds that have previously sunk all the way to the Pond.
Final thoughts
I love using analogies from the physical world to make sense of the digital space. I know it can sometimes be a bit overdone and if so, it might feel a bit cringey. But I hope that’s not the case here. This system works great for me – it brings a smile to my face every time, because of its associated imagery. I hope it’s of use to you as well: please let me know if you’ve decided to try it out. I’m curious to hear what did or didn’t work for you. I also think it could be used to organise stuff other than feeds.2 Let me know if you’ve found a creative use for it and I’ll add it here.