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gopher rings | |
August 11th, 2018 | |
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From ze libertine gamer [0] on Mastodon: | |
[0] ze libertine gamer | |
<zlg> Places like Bongusta and phlogroll remind me of web-rings | |
from the 1990s. Let's name'em gopher-rings, or perhaps gopher dens | |
if we want to be cute. They serve the same function: building | |
a network with volunteer participants (the curation process) and | |
technology that empowers the individual (self-hosting and | |
moku-pona). What do you think, #gopher? | |
tfurrows [1] also posted a semi-related phlog [2] today on | |
favorites and the tools that engineer our interactions. | |
[1] tfurrows - sdf | |
[2] tfurrows - favorites | |
- - - - - - - - | |
I started thinking about a response on Mastodon, but my head | |
flooded with too many things to fit in 500 characters. A phlog is | |
a better medium, I think. | |
In the nascent web we had many ways of finding each other and | |
other content that seems archaic or obtuse in retrospect. In the | |
very earliest days I kept a paper notebook where I manually wrote | |
down email addresses and websites. Later web-rings became popular | |
ways to link like-content to one another, forming communities from | |
the ether. By the time search engines came online we had all sorts | |
of other ways to bridge the gaps. | |
I think back to my time using AltaVista, or Lycos, or Yahoo!, | |
finding them awkward and lacking, and returning to the advice of | |
a webring or forum to find real relevant sites. I would cast | |
a broader net using a meta-search engine like SavvySearch and | |
click through pages and pages of results. That method of exploring | |
the web didn't take over in prominance for me, personally, until | |
Google began their takeover. | |
Web-rings fell to the wayside quickly as "googling" entered the | |
lexicon, and I don't think I consciously realized the | |
"engineering" or "channeled usage", as tfurrows puts it, was so | |
broadly affecting my behavior until very recently. In my head, | |
search engines are tools and I use them. If I am careful to avoid | |
tracking behaviors, they don't use me, right? | |
Well, maybe not. Google's algorithms, or a browser's "favorites" | |
screen guides our hand and our habits in a major way. We engage | |
with what we see and what we find, and that is a power that | |
shouldn't be forgotten. | |
So, thinking on ze libertine gamer's idea, I think the gopher | |
aggregators, the gopher-rings, are very much a throwback to the | |
old days when communities were more manually linked to one | |
another. There is still a power inherent in the tools we use, no | |
different than Google wields, or Firefox, but because it's curated | |
by participants in the community (like me!), I feel better about | |
it. Our micro-aggregators aren't monolithic. Anyone can run one, | |
thanks to the awesome utilities shared around the community. | |
My phlog roll [3] began as a personal tool for me to track the | |
phlogs I read. It's become a very popular starting point for | |
others as well, and so I added some language to the top on how to | |
get new sites added. Inclusion on my aggregator is open to all, as | |
long as your phlog is in a format that moku-pona can handle. | |
I don't want to be a barrier to finding gopher content; I want to | |
be an easy entry-point. | |
[3] gopher.black phlog roll | |
Have a site that you want added? Drop me an email at one of the | |
addresses in my contact page on this gopher hole, or reach out on | |
Mastodon. I try to watch SDF, grex, and the tilde communities for | |
new holes that pop up so I can add them quickly. I generally wait | |
until a phlog has at least two posts before I add it to avoid the | |
"hello world" phenomenon that litters SDF. Just hit me up if you | |
see something missing. |