Gopher Novice - Part I.
Stranger in a Strange Land
I am using Gemini protocol from February. I have spotted it on Mastodon. I had thought firstly that it is only interesting thing to look at. Then I decided to write some content. I don’t really know why idea of Gemini is so interesting for me. I was engaged by other inspiring people, who had been lost in “big” Internet and now, can be found around Geminisphere.
Because Gopher is Gemini place of birth, and my adventure with Gemini was so successful (and I had never been using Gopher before), I try to understand it now. I thought that it could be a way for better understanding my phenomenon. Why we start to explore so called small web (like Gemini, or as I understand, like Gopher have been before “big” web, and still is).
Gopher in common understanding is very similar to Gemini:
- its output is text only
- it’s changing whole experience of “web browsing”
- it’s gathering specific group of content producers (inspiring individuals rather than business and commercial).
- even a naming system is similar (“phlog” as Gopher log, and “gemlog” as Gemini log, Gopherspace and Geminispace etc.), I can smell there also that cosmic theme which made “capsule” term in Gemini for “site”.
But after a while in Gophersphere I feel that for me is totally different from Geminisphere.
I have searched [Veronica] (a "Google" of Gophersphere) for "Gemini" and I haven’t found any evidence of Gemini birth place. Only some official content which is available on every protocol.
I asked about it on Mastodon, and responses was as below:
- Nytpu@tilde.zone hinted about [Bongusta] and [Gopher Black’s] catalogs. I try to explore, from there, some phlogs, but without any success.
- Tomasino@tilde.zone added that is good way to get known to Gopher is analyzing [list of active Gopher sites]. Where everyone can find interesting content and organized small communities. I must explore this trail, but it could be time consuming.
I was thinking that responses would be more. But maybe Gopher users don’t like Mastodon, or they can’t see my post.
So for now I still know nothing about Gopher. I installed a proper client and haven’t found any recent nor useful information. Many people are using Gopher so it must be something in it.
But despite this cognitive failure I observed some things which are distinctive for Gopher, and which are improved in Gemini:
- in first time fixed character length of text line is something new and nice, as everything retro-style - but it isn’t nice after a while
- Gopher philosophy of content organization is strange for me and I can’t anything what could be useful now
- two above is some UX nightmare, which is solved in Gemini
- I haven’t spotted any tweaks which could be understated as tweaks in modern time (for example all what is connected with TLS in Gemini and is main idea for many Gemini apps)
Some articles mentioned that in last years Gopher start to be trendy again, and the total number of its sites has upward trend. I will try to examine this, but for now I think that Gemini has much higher potential of growth and I can’t say nothing about Gopher.
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szczezuja.space CC BY-SA
@ Tue 15 Jun 2021 10:46:39 PM CEST
tags: #rss, #gopher
/gemlog/