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goodbye tilde.black | |
September 05th, 2020 | |
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A few days ago I woke up to a string of emails about abuse from | |
a member of tilde.black upon EFNet, the IRC network. I was about | |
to start work and didn't have the energy or time to deal with the | |
problem, so I took the server offline. The next day I thought more | |
about the situation and realization came to me that I had | |
absolutely no desire to spend my time figuring out who the bad | |
apple was this time, removing them, and sealing the door against | |
them returning. It wasn't the first time I'd had to act upon | |
someone taking advantage of the system and it sure looked like | |
this wouldn't be the last time either. | |
When I created tilde.black it was on a whim. I had this silly idea | |
that I could pre-generate usernames from dictionary words and then | |
when people joined they would get a random name. What better way | |
to provide anonymity, right? Since it was going to be a system | |
about privacy, I felt a secure OS was warranted and I went with | |
openbsd despite knowing nothing about it. This was an opportunity | |
to learn, and learn I did. I learned to value and appreciate a lot | |
about that system. The sane defaults, the truly incredible | |
documentation, and the intuitive configuration were all pleasant | |
surprises. The web server, horribly named httpd (try web-searching | |
for help on that) was another matter. Shortly before this incident | |
I had finally broken down and just installed nginx. | |
The experiment was good. It lasted far longer than I expected and | |
gained far, far more users than I ever thought would find it | |
interesting. For one thing the very nature of this private tilde | |
went against the concepts of community building that really make | |
a tilde work. There was almost no peer engagement happening. But | |
people were attracted to the idea of the server. I think, in the | |
end, I was too. I really liked the concept of a private, anonymous | |
place where people could experiment. In reality it was pretty | |
boring, though. | |
From a user perspective the best thing that came out of it was | |
brool, a user who kept a file called "stoned.txt". It was in | |
essence a never-ending phlog/journal of random thoughts, ideas, | |
and art that came to them while they were high. It was fantastic. | |
I'm sad that's not around anymore. I hope whoever made it has | |
a copy somewhere and finds a way to ressurect it on another | |
server. It spawned a few copy-cat files, but it was a true | |
masterpiece and really deserves some recognition. | |
Beyond that there was some stock market analysis, a few irc bot | |
coding projects, the odd shell scripting thing here or there, and | |
a few minimal websites. Not a lot to miss. | |
I had put my initial gemini work up on the server. In fact, I made | |
it a point not to put gemini on gopher.black or on any of my | |
tomasino domains specifically as an excuse to log into tilde.black | |
and do something. That was all backed up in git, though, and has | |
since migrated over to tilde.team[0]. | |
[0] Tomasino's Gemini site | |
Tilde.Black is shut down for good. I stopped seeing it as fun at | |
some point and it had become a burden. I hadn't been able to put | |
that into words until this EFNet incident. Were it not for this | |
trigger the site may have continued for months more, but it would | |
have inevitably fallen. It was a neat idea and that's good enough. | |
Now I have cosmic.voyage as my sole remaining tilde community and | |
I want to put my love back into it. With the growing popularity of | |
black I hadn't spent nearly enough time looking after cosmic. It's | |
been sort of on autopilot, you might say. There's still writers | |
writing. There's still chatters in the channel in IRC. I find | |
I still have a passion for it and an excitement for it to continue | |
and grow. | |
This November I'm going to put out a series of writing prompts as | |
a sort of mini-contest to see how much we can all write. I don't | |
know that there are any prizes, but hey, maybe? I just want to | |
really do something for it to give it the love. Do you know what | |
I mean? | |
It reminds me a bit of cat's sites: baud.baby, baud.vision, and | |
konpeito.media. There's a guy who has some incredible passion to | |
the stuff he puts out there and I am in awe of it each time he | |
does so. But like cat, I get bored of it sometimes. Bored isn't | |
even the right word. Other things come first and it sort of | |
doesn't matter. Or maybe it does matter, but the fact that it | |
matters annoys me so I ignore it. Or maybe my mind is just sick of | |
dealing with thoughts in the way required to engage with my | |
project. There's a hundred metaphors and none are quite correct. | |
Cosmic will be getting more love soon. Hopefully my gopher hole | |
will as well. Once I start writing in one place it's hard not to | |
write everywhere. Maybe this post will help kick it off! Either | |
way, saying goodbye to Tilde Black feels great. |