💾 Archived View for zaibatsu.circumlunar.space › ~visiblink › phlog › 20190614 captured on 2022-04-29 at 12:26:07.
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A few days ago, cmccabe asked "what
websites do you *like* on the www? In
particular, what lesser known websites
do you like?"[1] I've been considering
a response since then. It's a
difficult question. There's not much
on the web that I would recommend to
anyone. I read a few news sites, keep
up with a couple of forums, and watch
some 'TV' on the web.
My favourite non-commercial websites
were both produced by the same person,
the mysterious K.Mandla, whose "Motho
ke motho ka botho" and "Inconsolation"
were long-running blogs about
minimalist computing on old
laptops.[2] I still return to those
sites occasionally. They're
comfortable, informative, and written
in a relaxed, conversational style. If
K.Mandla's blogging anywhere else now,
I'd love to know about it. Maybe -- I
like to think this is true -- K.Mandla
is one of you.
It's very hard to find that kind of
thoughtful, personal site amidst all
of the noise and traffic of the world
wide web. It also *seems* like search
engines don't turn up that kind of
small-scale site the way that they
used to. I've found in the last year
(maybe? maybe it's been longer and I
didn't notice) that Google must be
truncating search results in some way.
A search often turns up a few pages of
major sites and then a "that's all
there is" message. As a result, I've
turned to alternatives. Shockingly,
the best one (and I am aware of
DuckDuckGo, Startpage, Searx.me and
others) in terms of allowing me to
page through reams of obscure content
seems to be Bing! Against my better
instincts, it's now my go-to search
engine -- with javascript disabled
(unless I need to use the date-range
feature).
I think that's why I was drawn to the
pubnix/gophersphere. We can still find
each other here. But more than that,
it's clear that we post content
because we value that content and want
to communicate with one another, not
because we're all aiming to make a
dollar or become internet celebrities.
That was part of the joy of K.Mandla's
blogs. K.Mandla wasn't after fame or
fortune. They clearly valued anonymity
and there were never (as far as I
know) any referral links or ads in the
blogs. If one had appeared, it would
have seemed so strange and out of
place. I think everyone who followed
the blogs would have been taken aback
because they were personal -- a labour
of love -- and not, as it seems so
much of the web has become, an
impersonal effort to exploit the
medium and the audience for some kind
of individual gain.
So, along with cmccabe, I'm interested
in hearing about your obscure,
non-commercial web favourites.
[1] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/%7ecmccabe/20-noncommercial-www.txt
[2] https://kmandla.wordpress.com/
https://inconsolation.wordpress.com/