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Message boards via e-mail, not Gemini

text at sdfeu.org text at sdfeu.org

Fri Jan 8 21:57:22 GMT 2021

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On Fri, 08 Jan 2021 22:14:05 +0100, nothien wrote:

Jason McBrayer <jmcbray at carcosa.net> wrote:
Mailing lists and NNTP are, of course, the correct protocols for fora
or message boards. But I think what people want here is different.
Gemlog posts are standalone documents that you put out into the world
to read. It's a wonderful part of community that people write gemlogs
in response to other gemlogs; it's very similar to the early blogging
community before it became focused on monetization, and then crowded
out by social media.
What people want in this case, I think, is not so much a direct
analogue of a forum, but a way of collecting and following the set of
gemlog posts responding to each other, but also get notification when
your own posts are replied to. Maybe this set of conventions for apps
may look too forum-like, but it is a good suggestion for an approach to
the question of doing that kind of notifications without trying to do a
POST-equivalent over Gemini.
I understand what you mean, but to be honest, I don't have a solution to
that. I can't think of a way of bringing that feeling that you've
described to a system that properly manages replies, because I think a
fundamental part of that feeling is that the posts-in-reply are actually
disconnected, and on another person's site. A system that notifies you
(e.g. via e-mail) that you've got replies seems to destroy that feeling,
partly I think because it's too similar to the social media that have
taken over the world. Maybe it's different for you.

In https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/archives/gemini/2020/003299.html an idea was that servers track client referers to present those referers to the next visitors, but we do not have referers for very good reasons.

Sketching out the idea nevertheless ... * Interesting post b on server :b* Triggers person C to post her thoughts c on server :c with a link to b* Poster C visits post b via her own link from post c to post b* Server :b logs this referer, ie the URL of post c* On following visits of post b, server :b lists the logged referers * Server :b could pre-fetch refering content to check for appropriate content, eg containing "## Re: " or "=

[own URL]"

Alternatively webrings were proposed, which does seem like the correct Gemini way of doing it, though.