A few days ago, cmccabe asked "what 
websites do you *like* on the www?  In 
particular, what lesser known websites 
do you like?"[1] I've been considering 
a response since then. It's a 
difficult question. There's not much 
on the web that I would recommend to 
anyone. I read a few news sites, keep 
up with a couple of forums, and watch 
some 'TV' on the web.

My favourite non-commercial websites 
were both produced by the same person, 
the mysterious K.Mandla, whose "Motho 
ke motho ka botho" and "Inconsolation" 
were long-running blogs about 
minimalist computing on old 
laptops.[2] I still return to those 
sites occasionally. They're 
comfortable, informative, and written 
in a relaxed, conversational style. If 
K.Mandla's blogging anywhere else now, 
I'd love to know about it. Maybe -- I 
like to think this is true -- K.Mandla 
is one of you.

It's very hard to find that kind of 
thoughtful, personal site amidst all 
of the noise and traffic of the world 
wide web. It also *seems* like search 
engines don't turn up that kind of 
small-scale site the way that they 
used to. I've found in the last year 
(maybe? maybe it's been longer and I 
didn't notice) that Google must be 
truncating search results in some way. 
A search often turns up a few pages of 
major sites and then a "that's all 
there is" message. As a result, I've 
turned to alternatives. Shockingly, 
the best one (and I am aware of 
DuckDuckGo, Startpage, Searx.me and 
others) in terms of allowing me to 
page through reams of obscure content 
seems to be Bing! Against my better 
instincts, it's now my go-to search 
engine -- with javascript disabled 
(unless I need to use the date-range 
feature).

I think that's why I was drawn to the
pubnix/gophersphere. We can still find 
each other here. But more than that, 
it's clear that we post content 
because we value that content and want 
to communicate with one another, not 
because we're all aiming to make a 
dollar or become internet celebrities. 

That was part of the joy of K.Mandla's 
blogs. K.Mandla wasn't after fame or 
fortune. They clearly valued anonymity 
and there were never (as far as I 
know) any referral links or ads in the 
blogs. If one had appeared, it would 
have seemed so strange and out of 
place. I think everyone who followed 
the blogs would have been taken aback 
because they were personal -- a labour 
of love -- and not, as it seems so 
much of the web has become, an 
impersonal effort to exploit the 
medium and the audience for some kind 
of individual gain.

So, along with cmccabe, I'm interested 
in hearing about your obscure, 
non-commercial web favourites.





[1] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/%7ecmccabe/20-noncommercial-www.txt

[2] https://kmandla.wordpress.com/
    https://inconsolation.wordpress.com/