[HN Gopher] Rediscovering the Small Web (2020)
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Rediscovering the Small Web (2020)
Author : colinprince
Score : 220 points
Date : 2024-08-31 03:56 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (neustadt.fr)
(TXT) w3m dump (neustadt.fr)
| roschdal wrote:
| The web was so much more fun in the 90s.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Fun parts of the web still exist today, they're just struggling
| to be noticed. Arguably the biggest change since then is in
| signal to noise ratio.
| nicbou wrote:
| And the algorithms we live by.
|
| Google does not easily surface those websites. Social
| networks suppress posts with links.
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| The problem is that most of the interesting content I'm
| interested is posted in the not-so-fun parts of the web, so I
| feel forced to participate.
| CalRobert wrote:
| A lot of the good stuff got sucked in to walled gardens.
| People's personal home pages or tacky MySpace pages were
| definitely more fun than the current semiprofessional content
| scroll. Forums like this very one were mostly subsumed in to
| Reddit. Nevermind the death of the bbs (not actually the
| internet I realise)
| tropicalfruit wrote:
| mobile devices, app-ification and the social media that really
| started to kill the small web, kind of ironically.
|
| and if you're a front end developer it was apple launching the
| meta viewport tag in 2007 killed the simple front end.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| "Today is September 11323, 1993"
| nils-m-holm wrote:
| Here's my contribution to the small web: http://t3x.org
| sylware wrote:
| Careful, if you show noscript/basic (x)html does a good enough
| job, you will get attacked by big tech shadow-paid hackers (or
| idiotic ones), that to force you to use their javascripted
| grotesquely massive and complex web-engines.
|
| ...
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I also dislike the skinner box that is today's web, but do
| you really think it's somebody's job to attack you for having
| your site be a document?
| sylware wrote:
| Well, maybe not a static document, but as soon as you have
| some basic HTML forms doing a good enough job, I would not
| be surprised to it gets attacked by big tech shadow-paid
| hackers (or idiotic ones) to push forward their massive and
| complex javascripted web engines which they have control
| over.
|
| Look at whom the crime is a benefit in the end.
| NackerHughes wrote:
| What? This can easily be averted by adding a captcha to
| the form (server-side validation so no JS needed) and/or
| some sort of rate limiter or firewall, e.g. blocking any
| IP address that sends too many requests too quickly.
| felixyz wrote:
| Wow, I remember discovering your page in the late 90s. Never
| thought I'd find it again!
| nils-m-holm wrote:
| Being found is the greatest problem that small web sites have
| these days. Glad you found it again! :)
| pkphilip wrote:
| This is such an useful set of links! thank you!
| nils-m-holm wrote:
| Pretty much everything that is linked to is also on T3X.ORG.
| :)
| swayvil wrote:
| Hey man I'm into meditation too. Nice to meet you.
| thehappyfellow wrote:
| One of the best internet experiences I had in a while is reading
| (and writing!) posts on bearblog.dev, check out their discover
| feed. Wholesome place.
|
| In similar spirit, check out https://ooh.directory
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| If I'm excused for self-promoting, I've also made some tools
| for discovery:
|
| e.g.
|
| https://search.marginalia.nu/explore/random
|
| https://search.marginalia.nu/site/t3x.org?view=info
| 8organicbits wrote:
| Here's another self-promotion.
|
| https://alexsci.com/rss-blogroll-network/
|
| This uses OPML blogrolls to crawl blog-to-blog
| recommendations. I seeded it with the blogs I follow and
| various planets (https://indieweb.org/planet) and then
| recursively followed recommendations to build an organic
| network. Lots of the content is tech-related, indieweb, and
| smallweb. It's grown to 17 languages and over 4000 RSS/atom
| feeds.
|
| As an example, the linked blog has a page here [1] and it was
| discovered by a recommendation by [2].
|
| [1] https://alexsci.com/rss-blogroll-
| network/discover/feed-12ac5...
|
| [2] https://alexsci.com/rss-blogroll-
| network/discover/feed-8ecf9...
| freediver wrote:
| This is cool!
|
| Is the aggregate list supposed to update regularly?
|
| https://alexsci.com/rss-blogroll-network/rss.xml
| fortran77 wrote:
| I just tried using google to search for sites I see in
| ooh.directory, and it's very hard to get them to surface. I can
| take exact specific phrases from them, like "Scaling a Digital
| Panel Voltmeter" and without quotes neither Google nor Bing
| will find the site, and with quotes, only Bing finds the site:
| (https://zzncx.top/posts/scaling-a-digital-panel-voltmeter/)
|
| Personal blogs with real information just can't be found
| anymore.
| smetj wrote:
| Excellent point made
| 8organicbits wrote:
| Marginalia, mentioned in sibling comment, does exactly what
| you're looking for, I'm seeing the site as the top result
| without using quotes:
|
| https://search.marginalia.nu/search?query=Scaling+a+Digital+.
| ..
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| It's kinda hit and miss with regards to these types of
| queries.
|
| I've got better phrase matching in the pipe though, give it
| a few weeks and it should do this even better.
| Cosi1125 wrote:
| The Reddit thread [1] in which the author introduces Bearblog
| explains the sorry state of today's Internet a bit. "What's the
| point of blogging if I can't track users and harvest their
| email addresses?"
|
| [1]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Blogging/comments/i8fmuc/%CA%95%E1%...
| philistine wrote:
| For me, the point of my pointless blogging is to sell dozens
| of books across the world with my words in them. That way, I
| feel like I've achieved immortality. No joke.
| Kovah wrote:
| If anyone also misses StumbleUpon, there's something similar:
| https://cloudhiker.net
| mjfl wrote:
| In the same spirit, here is a site devoted to getting off the
| centralized platforms:
|
| https://landchad.net/
| sanjumsanthosh wrote:
| Wow this looks clean !
| janandonly wrote:
| Wonderful collection of how-to's to run your own server. Thanks
| for sharing.
|
| Might I suggest (in the interest of privacy) that you give
| donators the option to use a Silent Payment address instead of
| a naked BYC address? I noticed you have a Monero address as
| well, so I assume you care about privacy
| janandonly wrote:
| This is now the 7th time someone shares this link on HN. It must
| be worth a read
| raytopia wrote:
| I feel like the internet needs a giant directory of indie
| websites. So you can actually surf around and find them.
|
| The big modern search engines almost have to be intentionally
| hiding these websites because they're nearly impossible to find
| without using an alternative engine like wiby.me or
| search.marginalia.nu.
| ramses0 wrote:
| I was just going to post a comment similar to this. We've swung
| towards walled gardens of piles of content instead of graphs of
| individually curated links.
|
| Exactly that "surfing" or "webring" or "stumbleupon" style of
| actually browsing in a larger content rather than searching or
| push-promote within that pile of content.
| dartos wrote:
| I don't think Google hides small sites as much as people are
| really good at SEO for Google specifically.
|
| Like my blog has literally 0 SEO and you'll never find it, but
| a friend of mine has a blog where he does not post very often,
| but spends a lot of effort on SEO and it's very easy to run
| into his blog.
|
| The SEO meta destroyed small blogs.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| It's impossible to say this is something they do, but it's
| worth noting that Google also has an economic incentive to
| mostly show commercial/ad-ridden results, as leading users to
| blogs with no adsense on them make them less money; so it
| would at least be in their interest to let the search results
| look like they do.
|
| To fully understand Google you need to look at them not as a
| service that brings websites to people, but directs people to
| websites.
| leephillips wrote:
| "we expect that advertising funded search engines will be
| inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the
| needs of the consumers."
|
| -- Sergey Brin and Larry Page
|
| http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-advertising-and-
| search-e...
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Appendix A in this paper is a gem as well:
|
| http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf
| leephillips wrote:
| Contains the quote above and "The goals of the
| advertising business model do not always correspond to
| providing quality search to users."
|
| So what we observe in the deterioration of Google search
| was predicted by its creators, who made the deliberate
| decision to let this happen by accepting advertising.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Google went public in 2004, after that I don't think any
| amount of founder idealism could have saved it from
| shareholder pressure. If anything it's remarkable they
| held out as long as they did.
| philistine wrote:
| It's so unfortunate that no one inside Google is taking
| any decision to clearly make things worse. It's simply
| the structure of their business that is fundamentally
| wrong, and their founders had correctly identified the
| problem right at the start.
| makeworld wrote:
| https://ooh.directory/
| freediver wrote:
| Our contribution to the small web: https://kagi.com/smallweb
|
| The site and list of blogs is open source, growing steadily by
| about 10 each day (almost at 15,000 at this point).
|
| Every recent post from sites in Kagi Small Web is indexed and
| given preference in Kagi Search results.
|
| How it works: https://blog.kagi.com/small-web
|
| edit: The project just had its one thousandth commit!
| Kye wrote:
| It's StumbleUpon without the spam problem. I like it.
| sbarre wrote:
| https://wiby.me/ is also excellent. Someone else linked it
| elsewhere in the thread but worth riding the coat tails of the
| top post for anyone interested.
| philistine wrote:
| I know the friction to add websites is the point, but might I
| recommend a way to add our own websites without having to
| promote two others. My rinkydink website qualifies, but all the
| other small websites I know are all already on the list.
| Jordan_Pelt wrote:
| Thank you for this. It has inspired me to delete my Reddit
| account and create an HN account. This gives me hope that the web
| can survive the social media era.
| righthand wrote:
| Well this is social media too. Beware of shifting complexities!
| rambambram wrote:
| My list of shared links is here:
| https://www.heyhomepage.com/?module=timeline&view=sharedlist
|
| It's basically all the sites and feeds I follow daily with the
| Hey Homepage built-in RSS reader. You can browse the list and
| click around, or download it as an OPML file.
|
| RSS = Really Social Sites; OPML = Other People's Meaningful Links
| xenodium wrote:
| My contribution to the small web is a lightweight blogging
| platform: https://lmno.lol My blog is at https://lmno.lol/alvaro
|
| You can drag and drop your entire blog from a single markdown
| file https://indieweb.social/@xenodium/112265481282475542
|
| You can read the blogs from anywhere, even terminal (no JS
| needed).
|
| No need to sign up or log in to try it out. I haven't officially
| launched, but if you'd like to start blogging now, I'll be happy
| to share an invite code.
| r85804306610 wrote:
| i've been publishing things as html2 pages, but not
| interconnected in any way. so each page (or sometimes group of
| pages) will be dedicated to an exploration of a single subject. i
| then send those pages to people who i think might be interested
| in them. that's all, they otherwise don't see the greater
| internet. of course people are free to add them to link
| aggregators, etc. but i don't police this practice. i simply
| don't care for my output to be consumed by general public, or by
| llms, or by corporate media, or by whomever who is not my friend
| or in my immediate immediate circle of friends
| kaeruct wrote:
| One site in this vein that I hope never goes away is
| https://rpgclassics.com/
|
| I discovered it as a young lad lost when playing some RPGs on
| emulators in the early 2000s
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Seems like a small web deserves a small client. Why use a "big
| web" client to read the small web. "Big web" clients are funded
| by advertising or advertising companies.
|
| Bias disclosure: I have used a text-only client for the last 30
| years.
| AstroJetson wrote:
| There was a push during Covid on Gemini pages. I did that for
| awhile, but the lack of real formatting and not being able to
| cross link articles became a stopper.
|
| You can see get to some of them here
|
| Collaborative Directory of Geminispace: gemini://cdg.thegonz.net/
|
| But you need a Gemini reader
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