Several people have been discussing 
the utility of gemini this week[1]. I 
don't really want to weigh in on that 
conversation, other than to say that 
one of the themes revolved around 
whether gemini could serve as a 
replacement for the web. It's worth 
mentioning that replacing the web was 
not the original intention. More 
pointedly, none of us ever sticks to a 
single protocol. Protocols are not 
religions or political dogmas. They do 
not need to provide a single, unified, 
and exclusive internet experience. 
Rather, anyone who reads this phlog 
probably ranges across many protocols 
on a daily basis, using the web, 
gemini, gopher, ftp, xmpp, irc, pop, 
imap, smtp, nntp, etc., etc., etc. 
Realistically, it would be nearly 
impossible for most people to abandon 
the web today, since banking and 
commerce depend on it.

I also stumbled across a piece 
lamenting the loss of the older, more 
personal web[2]. Several people 
commented that the real problem is 
that you cannot find personal sites 
through search engines any more. I 
think that's true. There's a lot of 
good, personally produced stuff on the 
web, but it's nearly impossible to 
find. If you go three or four pages 
into the Google search results, you 
start to get a different experience of 
the web. But it could be better.

Here's my proposal. It might just work 
too. If you have a website that is 
personally produced and non-commercial 
(meaning *you* wrote the text or
produced the artistic content, and you 
have no profit motive of any kind -- 
you're not providing a commercial 
service, you're not seeking donations 
via Patreon or PayPal, etc.), you 
should add "smolnet"[3] to a meta tag 
on your site. Google apparently pays 
no attention to the "keywords" meta 
tag, so I recommend the following:

<meta name="Description" CONTENT="Your content yada yada yada smolnet">

Maybe this is a flawed idea. If so 
tell me. But it seems so simple. 
Smolnet is a unique term that should 
facilitate targeted searches. 

A while ago, I read a piece in which 
the author recommended that if you 
wanted to find a helpful solution to a 
problem, you should add "reddit" to 
your search query. I know that's 
liable to expose me to serious 
ridicule(!), but I've tried it and 
it's not bad advice. I'd like to be 
able to do something similar by adding 
"smolnet" to my searches so that I can 
find the small-scale, personal, 
non-commercial websites that I know 
are out there.

[1] https://lobste.rs/s/3nsvkk/gemini_is_useless
    https://lobste.rs/s/vhlagb/why_gemini_is_not_my_favorite_internet

[2] https://www.sffworld.com/forum/threads/i-miss-the-old-internet.57195/
    commentary: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27491537

[3] I _think_ this term is Shufei's 
kawaii-ification of Spring's "The 
Small Internet," but I could be wrong.