[HN Gopher] Ribbonfarm Is Retiring
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       Ribbonfarm Is Retiring
        
       Author : Arubis
       Score  : 60 points
       Date   : 2024-10-19 19:06 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.ribbonfarm.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.ribbonfarm.com)
        
       | blfr wrote:
       | It seems to me that the blogosphere was not a ZIRP but rather a
       | young Internet phenomenon. Which could exists, like usenet before
       | it, when mere access to it was a filtering mechanism.
       | 
       | Once you have seven billion people with virtually no access
       | control, you can't have a public blogosphere, and groups retreat
       | to the cozyweb.
       | 
       | Either way, I enjoyed it while it lasted. Thanks for the Office
       | series!
       | 
       | https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
        
         | bartread wrote:
         | > Once you have seven billion people with virtually no access
         | control, you can't have a public blogosphere, and groups
         | retreat to the cozyweb.
         | 
         | Why can't you? There's a logical leap in this statement I don't
         | follow.
        
           | rogers12 wrote:
           | Those seven billion people aren't very good for the most
           | part, and include a critical mass of spectacularly awful
           | people. It turns out that public access forums calibrated for
           | the small and self-selected community of mostly high quality
           | internet pioneers aren't prepared to deal with 1000000x
           | expansion of reachable audience. The Eternal September effect
           | has been getting stronger ever since it's first been
           | observed.
        
             | add-sub-mul-div wrote:
             | Yeah. That's why Twitter is useful as a kind of flypaper or
             | quarantine. Let the passive stay and let the deliberate
             | find new spaces that can be good the way Twitter once was.
             | If Twitter was to go away, places like Bluesky would
             | unavoidably get worse.
        
             | whatshisface wrote:
             | > _It turns out that public access forums calibrated for
             | the small and self-selected community of mostly high
             | quality internet pioneers aren 't prepared to deal with
             | 1000000x expansion of reachable audience. _
             | 
             | "Checklist for new theories purporting to prove that the
             | social web is presently unworkable:"
             | 
             | ...
             | 
             | 26. The predicted conflicts still wouldn't be as bad as
             | Usenet flamewars.
             | 
             | 27. Your theory proves that Hackernews does not exist. <---
             | 
             | 28. Audiences afraid of engaging with an unfamiliar
             | interfaces weren't making websites in 1998 either.
             | 
             | ...
        
               | Nihilartikel wrote:
               | Weeellll. Not every forum has a dang. Just saying.
        
               | immibis wrote:
               | Almost every one does.
        
               | rogers12 wrote:
               | This forum has been decreasing in quality since its
               | inception, currently hovering at not-quite-reddit and
               | that's with an organic audience of tech-adjacent posters.
               | It would turn into a smoking hole in the ground if it
               | somehow caught worldwide attention.
               | 
               | You're a fish swimming in fragile water you fail to
               | appreciate.
        
               | ddulaney wrote:
               | As the guidelines [0] state:
               | 
               | > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning
               | into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the
               | hills.
               | 
               | See the link for some examples, but I can also recommend
               | looking at some old front pages from over the years and
               | poking through the discussions. Unscientifically, it
               | seems that quality is pretty similar to me.
               | 
               | [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        
         | tuatoru wrote:
         | Substack is doing OK, I think. It's the intellectual child of
         | the blogosphere.
        
           | immibis wrote:
           | Substack (together with Medium) appears to _be_ the
           | blogosphere. As usual, venture capitalists managed to take
           | over an open protocol and turn it into a singular product.
        
       | cheschire wrote:
       | Having access to wikipedia on a phone everywhere you go is what
       | killed the bar conversation. No longer did you have to compare
       | notes and argue over beers to remember trivia.
       | 
       | And in that same way, no longer do people have to ramble on into
       | the aether in blog form to work through some shit. Now they can
       | do that with ChatGPT and actually get responses to their thoughts
       | in real time. And most of the time it's agreeable in tone.
       | 
       | Tech continues to change the world.
       | 
       | Maybe that isn't what is contributing to this particular blog
       | dying, but I bet it's contributing to the larger community of
       | blogs dying, which has probably created some inertia.
        
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       (page generated 2024-10-19 23:00 UTC)