I'm sure I'm irritating poor solderpunk with all my
questions (I'm kidding!). His blog suggesting that we all
consider hosting some free service has me thinking. I'm sure
that I will do it. The question is what. So I'm going to
think out loud here and consider the alternatives.
Solderpunk's list included "webspace, gopherspace, email,
XMPP, Mastodon." I can think of a few other options,
including hosting an AIM server (I recently learned that
someone is hosting a reverse-engineered one that works with
all the old clients), a webOS Preware repository, an RSS
feed service, a forum of some kind, a reddit replacement
that's not VOAT, a listserv host, or a usenet server.

One of the things that concerns me is what users might do
with a free service and what I would be responsible for.... 

Speaking of usenet, I've been trying to get back into it for
the last few months (via eternal-september.org), but it's
difficult to get past some of the very combative
personalities. Some of the posters seem to thrive on insults
and contention. The guy at ymodem.org wrote a phlog post
about closing comments on websites and his views on the low
barriers to commenting seem reasonable (i.e., that if it's
easy to comment, the comments are not as thoughtful).
Perhaps that's why I'm really enjoying phlogs, but have not
enjoyed my return to usenet. I think the ymodem.org guy is
onto something. Gopher seems to attract the kind of people
who put thoughtful effort into things. 

Anyways, if you have any other suggestions on what I might
do with my server, send them to me at visiblink (at) gmx
(dot) com. No guarantees that I'll accept your suggestions
though! Whatever I do, I'll have to be interested in
maintaining it.

More another day. My wife made pizza dough (it had to sit in
the fridge for two days... talk about slow food) and I'm
being summoned to grate cheese and cut toppings.