Does anyone feel the desire to 'copy' content from the web to here in Geminispace? Not just to have more stuff here or to make the Geminispace 'on par with the web' but to save it, bring it into a safe harbor, clean it up and find it a home to live in peace to be enjoyed by all of us.
HowStuffWorks.com comes to mind as a website that I used to really enjoy in the early 2000s but by the 2010s hardly featured on search results, articles are not as informative and the website suffers from the usual bloated user interface and intrusive ads.
If there was a re-imagined Gemini capsule version would it interest anyone? Or is Geminispace supposed to be just for blogs?
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7 months ago · 👍 userfxnet, clseibold
Thansk for the feedback @smokey I run my own private duckling proxy and mostly use it when there are http links in a capsule so that I don't end up back on the web. I'm understanding more and more that deep down we are all just here for good content. Copying the web is not inspiring for anyone. At the same time I don't like getting sent back out to the web when someone is linking a reference page in wikipedia that could just as easily have been a link to Gemipedia instead. I think I am wishing for a future where we rely on the web less and less. 🤞💭 · 7 months ago
if you want to mirror https content Newswaffle and Stargate relay are great resources, the collaborative directory of gemini also has an entire section for gemtext mirrors and proxies. · 7 months ago
I am less interested in copying Web content to Gemini than copying pre-Web content that never made it to the Web to Gemini.
I have 40+ years of lapidary and gemcutting zines from the various guilds in PDF that’s have never been converted to text and made searchable. I would very much like to make this resource exclusively available in Gemini.
I always said best way to study the foreign language is to find one thing you enjoy where the only information or community is in that language. I think the more useful things in Gemini that are not on the Web, the more reason there is to force people onto Gemini. · 7 months ago
I think if you personally see value in mirroring HSW, on Gemini, without all the bullshit, you should go ahead and do that regardless of what commenters say. I don't think the people who run that website would take too kindly to it though, so maybe like a fullblown homemade gem-based alternative to it would be a better direction to go in. · 7 months ago
I would be very interested in a gemini mirror of howstuffworks! It's stuctured, high-quality content that could be converted very effectively to gemtext. I would be curious if/how you integrate the photos.
I did something similar on gopher for liquor.com recipes, and I've been working on a mirror for early slashdot. They're fun projects that give you a chance to mess around with the protocol and how to structure things. · 7 months ago
I prefer content to blogging. Even if I still have to practice here myself. And I think @ruby_witch hits it well. as also nicely mentioned, old websites that are sometimes hard or impossible to find could definitely find a place here, in my opinion. · 7 months ago
@tm85 @userfxnet
I do agree with you, my bad for using 'copy' as that's not fully accurate.
Rehashed is more what I meant but I agree also problematic. · 7 months ago
@five_over_four
I'm not convinced that Gemini absolutly needs 100% original content but at a minimum we prefer content that is created with Gemini in mind. (thinking of the gopher, small web, spartan, etc poly-hosters) · 7 months ago
@gritty
Time is an interesting concept here. I think we align more with other 'slow movements' hence any content capsule project here will not have explosive growth (and that's a good thing). · 7 months ago
@ruby_witch 👍 · 7 months ago
I resonate with your post @clseibold · 7 months ago
Original content is better than copied content >> Copied content is better than nothing · 7 months ago
I desperately want more information on Gemini. It is a better place to get this type of information because of its focus on content over cruft.
I want programming language docs on here, information about books (like Goodreads!), information about Theology, Religion, Philosophy, how to cook things (recipes), music lyrics and db, etc. I think Gemini is *more* suited for these things than the Web is.
Tutorials would be great as long as they are polished and checked for accuracy! I do agree with others that original content is better than copied content, so it's better if you take the ideas of tutorials on the web and polish them up into something better. · 7 months ago
Exactly @tm85 there should be more places for content to be hosted over Gemini that's original and personally published rather than rehashed or mirrored content from the web brought over here. If we wanted stuff from the web, we'd be on the web. We're not, we're on Gemini, so we should take the obligation of occupying the space with original self-published media from each our own creative ability and talent, be that music, video, journaling etc · 7 months ago
I agree in principle, but I think it's the wrong way to attack the issue. We should focus on encouraging creators to publish on Gemini rather than simply copying their content and archiving it.
As long as creators are designing their content for consumption on the Web, it will be poisoned by Web-specific pressures like SEO. · 7 months ago
That said, I'll be setting up a public Duckling Proxy instance soon, for the sake of anyone wanting to load up any web-hosted content over geminispace. It'll be available over the Hashnix.club pubnix as an address pluggable as a proxy address. · 7 months ago
Who said Gemini is only for blogs? I keep seeing this sentiment around that, somehow, the Geminispace is merely text-only. That's just downright not true. Example: Goto geminispace.info, click search, and I implore you to type "content_type:audio/mpeg" and feast your eyes, or any other media mimetype. Goto Auragem, for example, and witness the indexed media via the Auragem search. There's plenty room for video and audio, be it lo-fi or hi-def, all it takes is the hosting and storage.
I even have a lil mp3 here:
gemini://hashnix.club/users/flipperzero/files/userfxnet_ynos_cc_by_3.0.mp3 · 7 months ago
gemini://hashnix.club/users/flipperzero/files/userfxnet_ynos_cc_by_3.0.mp3
I think this would be a good project for someone that had the interest and time. since we're text-first here, I think any amplifying images or videos would be a bit more challenging, but text descriptions would be good with some pictures to go along with it.
I think the biggest challenge for most projects here is time. but I may be wrong. · 7 months ago
i don't think there's much value in an alternative space if it doesn't generate its own content. then again, it's really hard for an alternative platform to generate it in the first place, so blogs it is. kinda like the xkcd where the security nerds are on their highly anonymised systems where they mainly talk about security.
best you can do, as far as i can tell, is write *interesting* blog content. · 7 months ago