[Draft] A folksonomy of lexicons

At the lowest level, digital social spaces built on top of atproto are decomposed into all of these tiny pieces of data (called records). Those records are divided up and stored in the folders by the account that created them (called the PDS), then stitched together to create the user interfaces we use to interact with each other. What's fascinating is that most of these records do not live in isolation of each other, like files on out desktop filesystem. Rather, they are densely interlinked together and what emerges from this are affordances that the web lacked.

Just like we have file paths in desktop computing to reference files, in atproto we have AT URIs. These are a transparent scheme that make all of the data on the network freely addressable. Anyone can create records that refer any other piece of data on the network without needing permission from the account that they are referencing. This creates a kind of additive graph of social data, which is quite different that say what the local-first community is explored around the same piece of data being authored

The most basic lexicon is one that describes content someone has published, a post on @bsky.app and company, a content of a blog post, a playlist on @plyr.fm, etc. Sometimes these are app-specific representations, sometimes, like in the case @lexicon.community events, they standardized a type of content. Content lexicons can link to other records, which is how a bluesky post or a leaflet document embed another bluesky post.

Content does not exist in isolation, it exists in a spectrum of social contexts. Lexicons that model social interaction such as likes, bookmarks, or replies often link back to a content record. When a piece of content is hydrated within a given social context, we are looking for all types of backlinks to these lexicons. Social interactions can also be content, whether it's an emoji reaction or a actual reply, but what's important is they exist within the context of another record.

Some domains don't have a single representation of content that the ecosystem can agree on, but it's still really important to have a shared language around publishing that content. Such is the case of @standard.site for blogs and in the future bookmarks, science publishing, and books. These lexicons are standardizing metadata about a given domain and a open hole pointing to the actual content. I like thinking about the design of these lexicons as pace layers:

A publishing lexicon functionally separates the data needed for distribution from the content, these schemas change at different paces. In the context of @standard.site innovation between different blogging services is mostly going to exist at the content layer, where they agree much less. But agreeing at the distribution layer has unlocked huge tailwinds for blogging being adopted across the Atmosphere without a single service being chose. The rule of thumb is that the shape of content is secondary to its intent.

There are many cases where a someone might want to vouch for someone else or something they made. This includes lexicons like @bsky.app's verification, @standard.site's recommendation, @v-it.org's skills, etc. In some cases these are one way vouches, one party is making a claim about someone else. For example with@bsky.app verification anyone can technically make verify anyone else, but an bluesky-esque app will only show the verification status of trusted verifiers.In other cases such as @youandme.at connections, it requires both parties to vouch for each other. In some cases a vouch points at an account and in others it points at a specific record. Attestations are lexicon standard that use cryptography to make vouching verifiable and harder to forge.