---
title: Too Many Options
date: Fri, 02 Jul 2021
---

About a month ago, I added a section to my website for notes. It was
mainly intended to serve as a space in which I would aggregate both
outgoing and incoming webmentions[1], but I had also planned on using
it for notes too short to warrant a regular post. I hadn't realized
it at the time but in doing this, I was kind of nullifying this space
by replicating its purpose.

[1] https://www.w3.org/TR/webmention/

In spite of this, there were times that I considered sharing some
thoughts here but I felt less inclined to do so after finding out
that content here is indexed and easily searchable over HTTP. There
are multiple sites that mirror the SDF Gopherspace to the web at
large and web crawlers do not discriminate against this content for
better or for worse.

It's silly to expect privacy and exclusivity when publishing one's
thoughts to the world but I have never felt particularly comfortable
with the concept of writing a web log. I have been experimenting with
it over the past few years regardless but I do what I can to
discourage bots from indexing my content. I thought about
self-hosting a Gopher server, which would likely go completely
unnoticed and therefore remain safe from indexers but I also don't
want this account to go to waste. In addition to donating, I think
that showing appreciation for SDF warrants actually using its
services and helping to keep the community alive.

Being amongst people who spew considerable vitriol at the HTTP side
of things has gotten me to periodically reflect on the web and its
relation to Gopher. I still don't think that the web is too bad of a
place despite being completely transformed by corporate interests.
Browsers might have become absolute behemoths and operating systems
unto themselves but they can still be used to view simple content
that was created decades ago. Rather than shunning HTTP, I think that
we could all be working towards creating a network of sites that
eschew tracking, analytics, and the pains of JavaScript in favor of
simple HTML and CSS. Flexbox and CSS grid have made creating sites
from scratch a pleasure. People can and do share simple text
documents over HTTP[2]. Gopher and HTTP can and should coexist, so
I'm not sure why it has to be one or the other for so many.

[2] http://len.falken.ink/

I also recently added commenting to my site and I think that it would
be great to incorporate this into Gopher. I have seen Gopher holes
with commenting enabled but I haven't actually seen them in action,
so I'm not sure how new comments would be handled. Based on some
recent experiences, I'd wager that most people probably have little
interest in either commenting or receiving comments but I think that
it's a more convenient and less formal way of engaging with someone's
content rather than sending an unsolicited e-mail.