[HN Gopher] Ooh.directory ___________________________________________________________________ Ooh.directory Author : adrianhon Score : 648 points Date : 2022-11-23 15:04 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (ooh.directory) (TXT) w3m dump (ooh.directory) | boplicity wrote: | The combination of good categorization and high-quality curation | make this a very interesting project. | | Curation, combined with good categorization, is sorely needed in | today's internet. | | The solution of "search" (aka Google) just doesn't cut it if you | want to discover the best publications in a topic area. | | I hope this project takes off! | prox wrote: | Yeah me too! | | A nice addition would be having account, and being able to like | it. Likes are not public, but instead combine to show you | things other people liked as well. Since they are not public, | hopefully that will discourage gaming it. | snapcaster wrote: | Site is down :( | philgyford wrote: | Looks OK from here. What are you seeing? | | (It's my site.) | ZeroGravitas wrote: | Firefox gives me this error: | | Secure Connection Failed | | An error occurred during a connection to ooh.directory. | PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR The page you are | trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of | the received data could not be verified. Please | contact the web site owners to inform them of this problem. | philgyford wrote: | Thanks. Strange, not sure why. Lots of people are managing | to see it fine, but there's obviously something not quite | right somewhere... | Farow wrote: | Works fine for me on Firefox 107. | snapcaster wrote: | Just checked again, not working for me in chrome getting | | This site can't be reached | n3storm wrote: | No linux blogs | pietroppeter wrote: | More of this please! | andrewstuart wrote: | Should be called | | oohya.directory | peter_l_downs wrote: | This looks like a really cool project, excited to browse through | over the holiday break. Just submitted my art blog | (https://freezine.xyz), but realized I don't publish an RSS feed. | Will have to address and resubmit. | pjc50 wrote: | .. https://freezine.xyz/1/high-bandwidth/index.html needs a | strobe warning. | InCityDreams wrote: | >Best on a desktop browser. | | Why, oh why....? Stuck in hospital, so much free time free, so | many restrictions, and yet so few - what am i missing, or | likely to have missed, being on mobile? | peter_l_downs wrote: | Sorry to hear you're in hospital, I hope you get well soon. | The warning is there because I don't design the site for | mobile, plus there is content hidden around the site that is | easiest to find by viewing source or otherwise exploring in a | way that mobile browsers don't make easy. | insane_dreamer wrote: | using on mobile browser (Safari); looking good so far | cactacea wrote: | Did someone just reinvent Yahoo as it existed in 1994? | saboot wrote: | I hope so, it was useful then, useful now! | monkeynotes wrote: | I don't think it's that simple. It was useful then because | web discoverability was an unsolved problem, and web content | was tiny compared to today. A directory sort of fit the need. | As the web grew directories became bloated and hard to | navigate, search became more useful. | | This is more of a nostalgia or niche link list. It's not the | same purpose as yahoo in the 90s. | blowski wrote: | If you don't think it's useful for you, then don't use it. | I like it, so I'm going to use it. | orlp wrote: | Web discoverability was solved and then unsolved once again | by endless SEO. | fnfontana wrote: | I think that search engines like Google are unbeatable to | find content that we already know about. On the other hand, | those lists are great to discover what we don't already | know about, such as new topics, etc. Just like the awesome | lists on GitHub. | luispauloml wrote: | > Just like the awesome lists on GitHub. | | What are these lists you're talking about? Could you give | an example? | OctopusLupid wrote: | One example: https://github.com/awesome- | selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted | ivan_ah wrote: | Here is an awesome list of awesome lists on various | topics: https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome#contents | mattarm wrote: | > Just like the awesome lists on GitHub. | | My thought exactly, and also why I don't just search | 'latest news' on Google every morning. Human curation is | a thing. (not sure how much human curation goes into | ooh.directory, but I'm pretty sure they don't use | Google's ranking algorithms to surface links) | philgyford wrote: | Hi, it's my site. I find the links by exploring*, and I | add and categorise them manually. | | * or "surfing the net", if you're old enough. | rjewell wrote: | doing god's work | pavlov wrote: | It's not a coincidence: there's a shadow of an exclamation | point in the logo, and the color scheme hints towards Yahoo!'s | trademark purple too. | aendruk wrote: | And the name. Yah _ooh_ | ralmeida4381 wrote: | LOL, that was my first impression! Obviously the milenials | doesn't know about yahoo. | | But well... the problem is almost the same: too few info == too | much info => No enough info to make decisions. | Mezzie wrote: | Hey now, a couple of us remember! ;) | | Yahoo is how baby me learned the word 'hierarchical'. | cactacea wrote: | Sorry to break it to you but I'm a millennial lol | cercatrova wrote: | Millennials? Or Gen Z? | | The youngest Millennial is 26, so they probably knew at least | a little when they were young about what Yahoo was. | [deleted] | xtracto wrote: | Reminds me of an old site I used to frequent in the late 1990s: | | https://web.archive.org/web/19991129033212/http://www.wannal... | | Back then, it had a lot of very interesting info to learn about | several subjects. I yearn for that internet. | dutchbrit wrote: | Looks like the site currently doesn't know how to serve PHP/you | download their source code for the homepage when visiting. | docmars wrote: | "No blogs promoting hate speech, denial of climate change, anti- | vax ideas, etc." | | Well that's a shame, there's quite a few out there that pose | credible and interesting questions and discussions around some of | these topics. | | Basically this is saying: "No conservative blogs allowed" which | erases at least 50% or more of the population's musings. | | I'd love to see an aggregator that isn't politically motivated | and biased as this one is. The internet would be a better, freer | place. | | We may even find that these "hateful", "alarming" ideas are in | fact mainstream after all and being unfairly suppressed by sites | like these as well as legacy media, social media, etc. under the | guise of the greater good. | alimov wrote: | > Basically this is saying: "No conservative blogs allowed" | which erases at least 50% or more of the population's musings. | | Curious which population (country?) you are referring to that's | 50% or more conservative | docmars wrote: | The United States, judging by voting numbers in the last 2 | Presidential elections. 50% is obviously a rough rounding, | and serves as a figure of speech. | ranger47 wrote: | Spreading misinformation is a VERY different thing from | constructive discussion of different takes on an issue. Anyone | taking offense to a request like this can't tell the | difference. | docmars wrote: | Valid discussions and critiques on the prescribed narratives | are all labeled as "misinformation" conveniently and | expressly because the holders of the legacy media narratives | are in power and do not wish to be challenged. Common | examples are: medical practitioners blowing the whistle on | vaccine injuries, or recommending treatments to illnesses | that have been demonized by media outlets. | | You would be shocked at how many things no longer exist, but | previously existed with incredible support and numbers behind | them. Everything from Facebook groups, YouTube videos, blog | posts, websites, etc. -- too many mediums to list, and yet, | unreferenceable here because they've been taken down by the | liberal moderation machine who's unwilling to view their | opponents as valid participants of grander dialogues, so | instead, enact policies of erasure rather than honest debate. | | It is not a fair game when those who are in power _are_ the | ones deciding what can and cannot exist in the public scene, | causing them to remain unchallenged, and prevents their | political opponents from obtaining power by suppressing their | use of the standard avenues of communication. | [deleted] | axg11 wrote: | I like the aesthetic -- a modern warm Craigslist? | blowski wrote: | How on earth do you use a website without full screen parallax | stock photos? | bradmcgo wrote: | Definitely checking this out. I'd love to dive into some new | blogs that offer in-depth, rich, original content. | xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote: | It seems that blogs can only be assigned to a single category. | What about sites that are dedicated to more than one topic? | | Nonetheless, this is a really cool project! | philgyford wrote: | As it says on the About page (https://ooh.directory/about/): | | > Some blogs appear in two or, occasionally, three categories. | If it would take more than that, it ends up in the wonderland | of Uncategorizable. | xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote: | Thanks, I somehow missed that. | | Since there's no way to select multiple categories in the | "suggest" form, I take it you will manually amend the entry. | philgyford wrote: | Definitely - but it's very useful to start off with a | suggestion! | cyrialize wrote: | This reminds me of Neocities Districts! | https://districts.neocities.org/ | zadler wrote: | Love to see this | sirodoht wrote: | That's pretty awesome! I maintain something similar: | https://collection.mataroa.blog/ | rambambram wrote: | Wow, big list! I bookmarked it. | | Ever considered to publish this list as an easily searchable | and exportable OPML file? | rchaud wrote: | Time is a flat circle, eh? | | But all kidding aside, web directories should be much more | powerful now than in the 90s. Websites have RSS, and directory | websites should be able to automatically monitor things like | uptime, and leverage RSS to preview a site's most recent post. | | I've considered maintaining my own directory on my personal | website (a one-way webring if you will), but always stopped | because the sites I linked to either died, or were acquired and | became something very different. | Minor49er wrote: | Regarding the lifetime of a site, it might be possible to | submit requests to the Internet Archive or similar service | whenever a site is added to a directory or a new post is found | on it. That way too, it would be easier to see when a site is | no longer active or when it turned into something else. Then, | when it's deactivated, the web directory could just point to | the archive first | nijave wrote: | Well, we have awesome-* in GitHub now. Unfortunately RSS seems | to still be hit-or-miss. | mypetocean wrote: | Do you mind clarifying what you're referring to? | mitchdoogle wrote: | https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome | r0fl wrote: | Are there any scripts or wordpress plugins that can build out | much better directories like you describe? | mrtksn wrote: | >Time is a flat circle, eh? | | I prefer Mark Twain's "History never repeats itself, but it | does often rhyme." | | It's pretty obvious that we have come to a stagnant period of | online content and there's a desire to move past the glamour of | the Instagram and political fights on Twitter and optimised for | ad revenue videos on Youtube but I don't think that the | personal websites are coming back. | | Those were cool because only specific type of people were able | to build websites, then the code free services for sharing | content came along and everybody got online presence but | because the medium is the message we are kind of getting tired | of the message. There seems to be a search for a new medium. | The time for the next verse feels around the corner but I don't | think we have found it just yet! | pvg wrote: | _I prefer Mark Twain 's_ | | That has its own history | | https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/12/history-rhymes/ | kachnuv_ocasek wrote: | I prefer Slavoj Zizek's "first time as a tragedy, second as a | farce". | mitchdoogle wrote: | We have lots of curated lists popping up. Pretty soon someone | will make a search engine to search all the lists. | tiffanyh wrote: | DMOZ | | Remind me of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMOZ | WallyFunk wrote: | Bookmarked. Will revisit. | | Anyone else notice everything old is new again? Neocities[0], | Marginalia Search[1], Project Gemini[2], etc | | There's many others I'm forgetting, and new ones popup on | Hackernews each week. | | Is this just basic nostalgia, people wanting to recreate the | dial-up days or even BBS days? | | [0] https://neocities.org/ | | [1] https://www.marginalia.nu/ | | [2] https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ | partyguy wrote: | You're right! Even MySpace is back [0] | | [0] https://spacehey.com/ | webscout wrote: | marginalia_nu wrote: | > Is this just basic nostalgia, people wanting to recreate the | dial-up days or even BBS days? | | That's certainly not why I created my search engine. Old isn't | an end, its a means to cut the bullshit. | | Like I read a lot of old books, not because I'm nostalgic for | yellowed paper, but because they consistently have much better | signal to noise ratio than most of what you'll find on a screen | or printed past 1990 or so. (When people bought books in | physical book stores and weren't primarily ordering books | online, books weren't judged by their page count as a proxy for | how much content they contained, and thus had a lot less filler | and anecdotes.) | | If you gave me a method of selection that was as reliable for | identifying good books among contemporary books, I'd probably | read more contemporary books as a result. | BirAdam wrote: | I believe that much of it is, indeed, basic nostalgia. Some of | this, however, is also the recognition that not all of the | early web was bad. Much of the early internet is viewed through | rose-tinted glasses, but some of it was really good. For | example, the ability to use a directory to find _exactly_ what | you're looking for while search just feeds you two pages of | paid result listings. Likewise, gopher made information | available on even the most modest of machines (gemini trying to | recreate something somewhat better) while modern web can spin | up cooling fans on high-end laptop from 2019. | nibbleshifter wrote: | I recently procured the highest specced out XPS 15 Dell | offers, and some modern websites manage to spin the fans to | an insane degree. | laputan_machine wrote: | Very cool | robga wrote: | It reminds me of DMOZ ODP days. | | Ohh.nostalgia | | http://www.odp.org/homepage.php (archive) | zozbot234 wrote: | DMOZ was and is freely licensed though. This one makes for a | nice proof of concept, but there's no mention of availability | or reusability for any of this data. | robga wrote: | DMOZ had an interesting license, as I recall | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Directory_License | | https://web.archive.org/web/20070813215202/http://www.dmoz.o. | .. | | "The Free Software Foundation describes the ODL as a non-free | license" | | But your point is a good one and well taken. | zozbot234 wrote: | It was relicensed as CC-BY in 2011, however. AIUI, the ODL | even predates CC. | Minor49er wrote: | You'll love Curlie which was created by a number of DMOZ alumni | | https://curlie.org/ | jordanmorgan10 wrote: | Funny enough, I searched for "iOS" and my blog was the only | result haha. Not sure how, or if someone else submitted it. | | As an aside, I wish JSON feed would've taken off :-/ I know, I | know, another standard - but it _was_ a better one I think. | aliqot wrote: | nice :) Now make it a webring with a snippet | AndrewStephens wrote: | More of this kind of thing, please. Any boost privately run blogs | get is a welcome respite from the walled gardens of most social | media. | | I am just sad that my very unfocused blog doesn't really fit into | any of their categories. | philgyford wrote: | There's always "Personal blogs", which is a large number of | them. | AndrewStephens wrote: | I guess I do fit in somewhere, thanks. | rambambram wrote: | I like how you say on your site that you recently joined | Mastodon, while your RSS feed works just fine and I see posts | from 2006. ;) | bsnnkv wrote: | This gave me a flashback to the final season of "Halt and Catch | Fire", which I enjoyed a lot and recommend to anyone who has | nostalgic feelings about computing and the internet in the 90s. | tracker1 wrote: | Looks like an early version of Yahoo! | perlpimp wrote: | it would be helpful if there was some sort of rss aggregator | functionality. Ie google reader that used to be. | piperswe wrote: | I've been working on something sorta similar, just focused on | general websites rather than just blogs: https://webjamboree.net/ | rambambram wrote: | Nice! Bookmarked it. | | I also recently started making some portal with curated links | and feeds. I call it Discovery Portals. The very small | beginning can be found at https://www.heyhomepage.com/discover/ | LoganDark wrote: | Instinctively typed "furry" into the search bar and got no | results. High quality! | mellosouls wrote: | Current curation rules: | | https://ooh.directory/about/ | | - Every blog must have an RSS or Atom feed. | | - Newsletters aren't included. Some sites are a blog and a | newsletter, with identical content, but only those which mainly | seem like a blog are included. | | - Only blogs updated within the past year or so are added. | | - Tumblrs are only included if they're either focused on a | specific topic or feature original content. | | - Link blogs are only included if they include original | commentary about each link. | | - No blogs promoting hate speech, denial of climate change, anti- | vax ideas, etc. | RobertRoberts wrote: | > - No blogs promoting hate speech, denial of climate change, | anti-vax ideas, etc. | | I've heard of Twitter accounts getting banned because they | mentioned some of these subjects in context of criticizing | them. (which is the opposite result that would be expected) | | How their curation process work is just as important as the | rules themselves. If it's transparent and there's a person (not | just an automated algorithm), is there also a recourse process | for false positives or bad decision making? | rideontime wrote: | I'm pretty sure Phil is the curator. | RobertRoberts wrote: | What is the "process" for resolving conflicts with Phil? | | (the key part of my concern) | manicennui wrote: | Don't use the site? | alexchamberlain wrote: | Email him and say "Hi Phil"? | RobertRoberts wrote: | My personal opinion is that Phil is a busy guy and | doesn't have time to carefully analyze your request with | any nuance. | | Here's an example of the difficulty. | | "Phil, can you review the article [link to blog] where | you banned us from? We are critically analyzing a very | socially sensitive topic and while we are disagreeing | with the majority of people, we actually encouraging | unity and are not encouraging any hate. You can clearly | see if you read our entire article." | | Or, "I only linked to Trump's tirade to point out how | insane it is. Can you re-read my article....?" | rchaud wrote: | Sounds like you might be better off acquiring an audience | via newsletter. | RobertRoberts wrote: | > I've heard of Twitter accounts getting banned because | they mentioned some of these subjects in context of | criticizing them. (which is the opposite result that | would be expected) | | My comment above is the very reason for this discussion. | Not using the site is the same as suggesting not | commenting here, which is nearly nonsensical. | [deleted] | quriosity wrote: | Tade0 wrote: | I have to say I enjoy the consistent sub 800ms load times. | felipelalli wrote: | I miss directories. The hard part is to keep it up to date and | delete unreachable sites. Also flag the inactive ones. I don't | know if this site does this. | davedx wrote: | Not OP's first rodeo. I was exploring his website and found on | archive.org his first web directory, from 1998! | https://web.archive.org/web/19980628182433/http://www.gyford... | colinprince wrote: | see also Today's Guardian: | | https://guardian.gyford.com/ | adrianhon wrote: | More context in this announcement post! | | https://mastodon.social/@philgyford/109393682988861819 | s3000 wrote: | This is the best thing for RSS in a long time. What I miss though | for RSS streams is commenting. 'Nobody' reads the articles on | link aggregators, (*e: just the comments). In a way, RSS is a | link aggregator that limits its user base to the ones who read | and don't comment. | | I am wondering what will happen if RSS readers find a way to | share comments on posts. Maybe ActivityPub makes that possible. | | The only service of which I am aware that allows for comments on | RSS is https://linklonk.com/ . Are there other approaches to | bring comments to RSS streams? | | Maybe ooh.directory can use ActivityPub to allow commenting and | voting on the entries. Comments on HN are great to check for | problems with an article. That should also be true for comments | about entire blogs. | rambambram wrote: | > What I miss though for RSS streams is commenting. | | >In a way, RSS is a link aggregator that limits its user base | to the ones who read and don't comment. | | I share this view. What do you think about a concept wherein a | collection of followed feeds is presented in a timeline with | the possibility to 'comment' with an email form? It will look | like a regular comment textarea under some blogpost, but the | commenting is done by email. The reaction isn't immediately | visible under the blogpost (if at all) and therefor everything | works humanly slow. But there's also no signup required, so | it's more anonymous and openly accessible. | kepano wrote: | I love to see this. The death of blogs and RSS is highly | exaggerated. The idea that Google "killed" blogs by killing | Google Reader is a meme that is more destructive than Google's | act in itself. | | There are countless healthy and active blogs that you can read | via RSS. There are great RSS reader apps. | | For us technically-minded folks we need to keep being proactive | about helping people read the web via RSS, improving discovery, | and continually making RSS a first-class option on sites we | build. | moffkalast wrote: | Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like RSS goes against | the core interest of every website to actually get traffic for | ads, google rankings, et cetera. Why would anyone implement it? | rchaud wrote: | Why did people create podcasts for free and distribute them | via RSS? Because there once was a time when advances in | computing had use cases that weren't driven entirely by | commercial interests. | janalsncm wrote: | On my blog I get about 800 hits per month. It's not enough to | generate meaningful revenue with ads. So my blog is more | about branding and SEO for my name, and slapping an ad or | even a donate button feels cheap to me. | | If I had 10x the visitors I might see things differently but | I think a lot of small blogs are in my boat. | Kye wrote: | The troubling assumption here is that every site has or | depends on ads and cares about rankings. | | >> _" Why would anyone implement it?"_ | | Because your assumption is wrong. | executesorder66 wrote: | They wouldn't, but who cares about them? RSS is for people | who blog to share their interests freely, and to help their | readers get the content more easily. | manicennui wrote: | Not everyone is trying to monetize everything. | nibbleshifter wrote: | Absolute heresy to say that on here lol. | rambambram wrote: | I would say that providing a first paragraph of text by RSS | feed might actually attract more users/readers to a site to | read the full article (paid or not). | | Wasn't it Basecamp/37Signals who said to emulate drugs | dealers and give the first try away for free? ;) | nibbleshifter wrote: | I've never met a single drug dealer who actually gave any | drugs away for free. | susam wrote: | I have been maintaining a personal website since 2001 and the | core interest of my website is to share things I find | interesting. RSS does not go against that. On the other hand, | RSS makes it easy for subscribers to find out when I have | shared something new. | lgas wrote: | Different people have different goals. | onetrickwolf wrote: | I think people seem them as dead because a small percentage of | internet users engage with them, but people forget that | billions more people have access to the internet now. Even | though it's a smaller percentage, the actual number of users | has still gone up generally in my experience. | wpietri wrote: | It sure didn't help, but I agree that Google Reader's death | didn't kill blogs themselves; the decline has been pretty | steady (Reader was killed in 2013): | https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=r... | | I also agree that RSS is still worth it. I am a happy | subscriber to Newsblur: https://newsblur.com/ | | Indeed, the mess that is Twitter is giving me hope that we'll | see a comeback of people self-hosting their content. | marban wrote: | https://biztoc.com for instance. | asicsp wrote: | Reminds me of https://blogsurf.io/ which used to have a way to | list recent blog posts (but couldn't find a way to do so now). | | This one has categories and filtering options, nice! Random is | good to have (see also | https://search.marginalia.nu/explore/random) | the-printer wrote: | This is cool, shout out to all the directories and lists and | aggregators. | yrds96 wrote: | This is the idea that I always had but never implemented. I'm | glad my dream came true. | [deleted] | afarrell wrote: | This design is really pleasing to my eye. | unglaublich wrote: | Humans aggregating what they think is useful for other humans. | That is the internet of the past, and hopefully of the future. | rambambram wrote: | I can't agree more. It's the only way to stand up to the fakery | and artificiality of algorithms. I try to make my software | 'internet friendly'. | insane_dreamer wrote: | Looks very nice. Unfortunately a lot of good bloggers now use | paywalled substack (I don't blame them, I don't have time to | write for free either), but this is a good resource for the few | that are still gratis. | sneak wrote: | I was thinking of starting a web directory similar to this! I'm | glad to see it. | | Is there an OPML file that lists all of the blogs it knows about? | philgyford wrote: | I will be adding various OPML files at some point. | rambambram wrote: | Smart request! I recently started collecting blogs on | https://www.heyhomepage.com/discover/ (almost nothing to see | there right now) and I planned to publish the lists of links | also as easily searchable and sharable OPML files. | komali2 wrote: | Fun and utterly off topic: I'm on a boat for my partner's | birthday, and this "FortiGuard" web security thing they use on | their satellite internet that yesterday temporarily prevented us | from watching porn together is today preventing me from viewing | this cool site, on the grounds: "Newly Observed Domain." | | Wondering who thought new domains should be blocked "just in | case" and how they determine that. What percentage of requests | the service receives are domains its never seen before? Assuming | 90% or so are like, google, facebook, etc, but what if someone | has a phone app that calls weird api domains? Actually that might | explain some of the random weird failures I've been seeing on | this trip... | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-11-23 23:00 UTC)