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I Miss the Old Internet

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Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#201

Post by stakhanov »

pfundstein wrote: post #186
drewm1980 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Build it!

Easier said than done. How do you programmatically define "genuine" in a way that can't be easily spoofed?

* let content producers sign their content and discount producers who have a lot of content on the web

* presence/absence of ads from known ad networks

* presence/absence of google analytics etc

* ratio of a page's download volume in bytes versus number of square centimeters of the viewport when rendered by a typical user

* cap the point at which higher update frequency scores you "ranking juice". real human beings doing a website for a non-commercial motive and who set a high bar on meaningfulness of their communication aren't going to update their site multiple times a month. you have to outsource the creation of thin content to achieve that, which is what we don't want.

* cap the point at which younger content ranks higher & cap the point at which older content ranks lower, for similar reasons. information that is great information today because it's topical, and no longer great information tomorrow was probably never great to begin with. and if content is great, then it will age gracefully. -- as a matter of fact you may want to downrank content that's very young for that reason. web search is about searching something that should be a permanent information store / archive sort of thing. if you're looking for something that's more like a newsfeed, discovery mechanisms other than search should be used.

i'm sure i could think of more. but one thing that strikes me about the above list is that a lot of this stuff is the exact opposite of what google is doing right now, so the shittiness of today's web is, to a large extent, engineered. i don't think it's within the nature of the web that it inevitably has to be like what it's like today.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#202

Post by anon9001 »

heavyset_go wrote: post #173
anon9001 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Subjecting people to the degrading and hateful ideas that target them for the sake of the well-being of the people spewing it is not an equitable proposition. Is that really true on the internet? "Subjecting people" makes it sound so extreme. In reality, all you had to do was hide a few subreddits and you'll never see them again. They were already removed from the frontpage well before any casual user would encount…

> Is that really true on the internet? "Subjecting people" makes it sound so extreme. "Censorship" makes it sound so extreme. Is it really so bad that people get banned from a forum?

It is. I can't unban them and see what they said.

HN does it correctly. I can show flagged posts. This adds a helpful dimension in figuring out what a community values. I think moderation being opt-out is wise.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#203

Post by snaky »

chipperyman573 wrote: post #122
snaky wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web forums are really big part of modern Internet, reddit is just the one of them.

In the classic web forum sense? Culture and all? I haven't been able to find any (but also I haven't looked very hard in the last 2-3 years). How are you finding out, just word of mouth?

Classic, yes. Forums like XDA-Developers, EEVBlog, Head-Fi, or DIYAudio.com. You can pretty much just search for " forum" and find them. Many of the best forums in the modern Internet are Russian and Chinese by the way.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#204

Post by dec0dedab0de »

stakhanov wrote: post #201
pfundstein wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easier said than done. How do you programmatically define "genuine" in a way that can't be easily spoofed?

* let content producers sign their content and discount producers who have a lot of content on the web * presence/absence of ads from known ad networks * presence/absence of google analytics etc * ratio of a page's download volume in bytes versus number of square centimeters of the viewport when rendered by a typical user * cap the point at which higher update frequency scores you "ranking juice". real human beings d…

information that is great information right now because its topical, and no longer great information tomorrow, was probably never great to begin with.

I absolutely agree, but if it's true then maybe Wikipedia is to blame.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#205

Post by mikekchar »

adg29 wrote: post #156
myrandomcomment wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am six months into reddit detox. The amount of time I have back is amazing. Only semi social site I read is this one. I have internet down to BBCNews, NHK, Reuters, HN, a few comics, Ars, next platform, the morning paper, Matt Levine and el reg. I am much happier :)

Curious but why do you qualify HN as semi social?

Not OP, but personally I definitely view HN as a comment board that points to links as a way to drive discussion as opposed to a news site that allows comments. Probably not how it is normally described, but it's definitely how I use it.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#206

Post by anon9001 »

solarkraft wrote: post #57
zozbot234 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how else would you have found it except "through links from similar small websites"? By browsing Web-Directories such as DMOZ/ODP, mainly. Albeit that's really a late-90s and 2000s thing. We should go back to that kind of curation effort. It would be more of a challenge for politically-sensitive stuff (the Internet overall is a lot more politicized and less free-speech-friendly than it used to be) but for most unco…

I'm sure there are lists like these and we just don't know about them.

They're called awesome lists and this is the problem they attempt to solve. Here's a starting point https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#207

Post by anon9001 »

lethologica wrote: post #83
esotericn wrote: post #28

It's all still there, the major search engines are just broken because they've been co-opted by SEO. Tons of people still own and operate their own websites; BBSes exist; IRC is still here; mailing lists are still here; and so on and so forth. You just won't find it on the top hit at Google because their business model is based on ad sales wankery. Whilst we're on the topic, I'm gonna take the chance to write - if yo…

>if you work on this corporate shit and you're doing stuff you despise day in day out - please re-assess whether you could change things in your life to prevent that I once worked for an SEO agency and ended up quitting after 4 months. Everything about it went against my morals. I was disgusted with myself for pushing rubbish sites, snooping on peoples browsing behaviour, and working to squeeze every cent from it all…

Can you elaborate more on what that industry is doing? How would you snoop on people's browsing behavior?

I'd be curious if you know of any industry blogs or forums that you'd read to stay current on techniques.

I haven't followed SEO since the early days of link trading and keyword stuffing.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#208

Post by snaky »

cartoonworld wrote: post #144
ShteiLoups wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the difference between blogs and hobbyist sites though? A defined purpose? monitization? I suppose it would be a hard fight to get google to specifically favour non-adsensed sites.

I just ran a google search for "Power Inverter Van". All of the results are either direct sales or affiliate advertising brochure sites disguised as a lifestyle blog. I guess you could argue that if I google that search term I'm probably planning to buy one or something, but if I append reddit I can get a really crappy discussion tab-esque function. If I try "Solar Powered Van" the results look a bit better but are b…

To find any useful content, first thing you do on the modern Internet is search for relevant forum for the topic you are interested in.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#209

Post by rimliu »

JohnFen wrote: post #30
notJim wrote: post #5

I generally agree. I've taken to appending "reddit" to many of my search queries, because flawed though it is, reddit is one of the few places you can read an actual human thought. It feels like nearly all content on the internet is some de-personalized corporate "content marketing" blog at this point. Just give us your email address and we'll send you a PDF (and a drip marketing campaign.) I think the old internet w…

Do you not find Reddit to be a bit of a cesspool? I tend to avoid it for that reason, but how true it is probably depends on which subreddit(s) we're talking about.

I find Reddit more healthy than HN, to be honest. At least it seems human compared to HN sterility. But of course, it all depends which subreddits you read.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#210

Post by flukus »

chrisco255 wrote: post #189
rixed wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the old internet is still there but hidden behind the 100th search result page. I often times wish search result were ranked by how genuine the page seems to be, measured by the ratio of content over ads. Indeed, the less advertisement on a page and the more likely it is written by an actual human being with something to say. Sadly, I suspect ranking to works exactly the opposite.

Maybe we need to bring back "web rings" and blog rolls.

Someone linked me to this on HN a few days ago: https://neocities.org/browse . It definitely brings back that old geocities/webring vibe the internet used to have.
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