There is an interesting discussion on Lemmy [0] about the methods
for replying to phlog entries. My thinking on this has changed over
the years, generally now I think replying on your own phlog or
sending an email are the best ways to get a conversation going.
However, discoverability can be an issue, and I think it can help to
keep in mind the limitations of gopher search engines like Veronica,
which only index selectors - make your selector strings descriptive
if you want them to be searchable [1]! For phlog replies, as an
example, something like "/0/response-solderpunk-privacy.txt" could
be used and that would allow solderpunk to search for replies to his
post (or posts) on privacy across gopherspace. One can also make
sure they are part of the many phlog aggregators. I can't speak for
anyone else, but checking the aggregators is my first stop when I'm
browsing gopher.
I did write slerm [2], which is a dynamic gopher blogging engine,
similar to the old bloxsom, that allows commenting on phlog posts,
among other web-like niceties like post tagging and filtering. But
nowadays I lean more towards phlog or email replies as these methods
seem to fit better with gopher and the smolnet by promoting more
thoughtful discussion. The 7 item-type re-purposed for general user
input on gopher is also a bit clunky, as much as it works for uses
like this. Gopher of course has nothing like a referrer or cookies
to indicate session context, meaning you have to include the context
with the type 7 input somehow. With slerm, the user has to prefix
their comment with the file name of the post.
[0]:
https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/535139
[1]:
gopher://sdf.org/0/users/slugmax/docs/gopher/making_gopher_search_useful.txt
[2]:
gopher://sdf.org/1/users/slugmax/gopher_blogging_utilities
