I mentioned in a previous post [1] that it will be
neat to watch as pubnix users continue to develop
the social tools used by the pubnix community
itself. Below is a list of some software and
features I've seen available on pubnixes and
pubnix-like systems recently. And some are not
written yet; just concepts that would be neat if
they did exist.
Note that I am a gopher newbie and minimalist,
so although I am aware of several pubnix-user
developed gopher utilities, I don't list them
here.
I believe that several of the programs below
were written by smj on SDF, so rather than
repeating his name over and over below, I've
*'ed those items.
~ INTER-USER COMMUNICATION ~
notes* - leave notes that individual other users
will see on login.
messages* - send direct messages to other online
users. somewhat redundant with standard
'write' program.
anonymous community journal - like
"happening"* on SDF.
chat - lightweight alt. to IRC. e.g. schat on
Zaibatsu, chat on colorfield.space, party
on grex, or even com* on SDF.
bbs - e.g. telem (solderpunk), gboard
(tfurrows), SDF's bboard, or tilde's
bbj (desvox).
~ NOVELTY ~
oneliner* - enter a single line of text (a witty
saying, typically) or view a randomly
selected line contributed by others.
tilde-train - a variation on "sl" (steam
locomotive) that builds a train by
adding cars that users define in
their .choochoo files. (written by
yours truly, which is why it is so
poorly coded...)
novelty irc bots - Many, many, many. Some are
useful, some are fun, some are downright
annoying (if overused).
## This novelty section could be gigantic. In some
ways, this is some of the most exciting elements to
pubnixes, the engineer's playground of digital toys.
I'll cut this short with elipses and make a
dedicated "pubnix novelty programs" another time...
~ GOVERNANCE ~
voting tool - solderpunk mentioned this concept on
gboard a while back. I don't know if such a
tool actually exists.
vouch system - allow users to voice confidence that
a new, unprivileged user is trustworthy and
should be given full user rights
(blinkenshell, presumably written by
independence.)
on-boarding quiz - Part of automated new user
sign-up process. ensures that applicants
have read and understood the code of
conduct and related
information.(Blinkenshell, presumably
written by independence.)
invite code generator - Allow users to vouch
for and invite others (for bigger
systems, obviously).
~ PUBLISHING/BLOGGING ~
command line blog - I would love to see one that is
.plan or .project based, as someone on
circumlunar.space mentioned recently. I
believe tilde.town's Feels Engine can do
this (and more, e.g. post to html), but I
haven't used it yet.
~ INFO ~
who/last - List who is online, potentially what
they're doing, and the last login time for
people not currently online. This would be
a combined version of 'w' or 'who' and
'last' commands.
sysinfo - pubnix users are geeks, usually. Give them
a command that summarizes system resources,
load, and other interesting bits.
--
This gopher post will be a work in progress for a
little while. I'd like to think more about the
categorization and about the criteria for what is on
the list and off the list (e.g. this does not
include tools like "finger", a classic and still
useful tool for looking up info on other users).
And, this list is in no way intended to suggest that
a standard set of tools should be used across
pubnix-ville. The opposite, in fact -- variety is
mroe interesting. This list is just intended to
remark on how much is going on already, and to
suggest a few tools that would be nice to see built.
[1]
gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/~cmccabe/06-hexachlorophene.txt
