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The “small web” is bigger than you might think

kevinboone.me

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Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#211

Post by nomdep »

gzread wrote: post #167
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do live in that world. Encryption is not at all necessary for the majority of web sites out there. The practice you speak of is not commonplace and does not need active defending against.

ICE is tracking people on social media, and the only sign it's happening to you is when they show up to your door with guns and handcuffs. If they could track who was reading subversive content, they would. It's better we don't give away more information than necessary.

[dead]

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#212

Post by thesuitonym »

unsungNovelty wrote: post #152
susam wrote: post #7

A little shell function I have in my ~/.zshrc: pages() { for _ in {1..5}; do curl -sSw '%header{location}\n' https://indieblog.page/random | sed 's/.utm.*//'; done } Here is an example output: $ pages https://alanpearce.eu/post/scriptura/ https://jmablog.com/post/numberones/ https://www.closingtags.com/blog/home-networking https://www.unsungnovelty.org/gallery/layers/ https://thoughts.uncountable.uk/now/ On macOS, we…

Hey!!!!! That is my website! To be fair, the hard part is hard to keep a personal website regularly updated without making people think it's abandoned. I don't have a regular post cadence. So it looks like I don't touch the website at all for months. But I regularly update my posts and other sections event if there isn't any new posts. I also wrote something similar to OP - https://www.unsungnovelty.org/posts/10/2024…

For my part, if I come across a personal site that hasn't been updated in a few months, I don't assume it's abandoned, just that the person hasn't had anything to say for a while. I'd rather see a site with updates every few months, or even once or twice a year, than one with an update every other week saying "Sorry I haven't updated."

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#213

Post by thesuitonym »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #157
susam wrote: post #7

A little shell function I have in my ~/.zshrc: pages() { for _ in {1..5}; do curl -sSw '%header{location}\n' https://indieblog.page/random | sed 's/.utm.*//'; done } Here is an example output: $ pages https://alanpearce.eu/post/scriptura/ https://jmablog.com/post/numberones/ https://www.closingtags.com/blog/home-networking https://www.unsungnovelty.org/gallery/layers/ https://thoughts.uncountable.uk/now/ On macOS, we…

These curated discovery services require RSS and Atom feeds. My site doesn't even have those. Looks like I'm too small for the small web.

That's big web thinking. A small website doesn't need to be discoverable. It's supposed to be for you, and if someone else stumbles upon it, and finds it useful or entertaining, that's a bonus.

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#214

Post by kalavan »

Terretta wrote: post #205
technothrasher wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My similar happy childhood moment was when my home page made the Netscape "Rants and Raves" page for my extensive tribute to Lindsey Wagner (the actress who played the Bionic Woman), and that leading to my local newspaper interviewing me for an article on what the heck this "World Wide Web" was. I went on and on about how the web was revolutionary as an equalizer, allowing anybody to publish and actually be heard wit…

Pamphleteering has a storied tradition. Self-publishing remains accessible today. What confuses me are the reflexive "why would I publish if I'm not getting the ad revenue" and "why would anyone take their time w/o getting paid" type remarks. Same comments about music: nobody will record songs without getting paid. And games: what's even the point in playing a shooter without dropping loot? The last one encapsulates…

Sounds like classic crowding-out of intrinsic motivation.

There's a story, I can't find the page at the moment, of someone who was getting pranked all the time (his house TPed or egged or something). So he offered the miscreants $1 to do it tomorrow. He kept on doing it like this, and then a few days later, he offered a quarter. By the time he had got down to a dime, they said "there's no way we're going to do it for such a measly sum" and left.

Better sourced examples also exist: fewer citizens supported a decision to build a nuclear waste repository in Switzerland enjoyed more support if they would be offered compensation: https://www.bsfrey.ch/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/crowding-ef... p. 96 (sixth page of the PDF).

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#215

Post by baud147258 »

pixodaros wrote: post #132
8organicbits wrote: post #16

One objection I have to the kagi smallweb approach is the avoidance of infrequently updated sites. Some of my favorite blogs post very rarely; but when they post it's a great read. When I discover a great new blog that hasn't been updated in years I'm excited to add it to my feed reader, because it's a really good signal that when they publish again it will be worth reading.

One of the many things I disagree with Scott Alexander on is that to me, frequent blog updates signal poor quality not excellent writing. Its hard to come up with an independent, evidence-based opinion on something worth sharing every week, but easy to post about what you read lots of angry or scary posts about. People who post a lot also tend to have trouble finding useful things to do in their offline life. It is v…

> frequent blog updates signal poor quality not excellent writing

it might be true, but there are exceptions, like acoup (history-focused), which is written by ancient history professor.

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#216

Post by fbilhaut »

AdamN wrote: post #194
shermantanktop wrote: post #17

This is a specific definition of "small web" which is even narrower than the one I normally think of. But reading about Gemini, it does make me wonder if the original sin is client-side dynamism. We could say: that's Javascript. But some Javascript operates only on the DOM. It's really XHR/fetch and friends that are the problem. We could say: CSS is ok. But CSS can fetch remote resources and if JS isn't there, I wond…

I would put it all on cookies. No third party cookies (at all) - good. JS and CSS and even autoplay video is fine as long as there are no third party cookies. That would make the Small Web bigger but it would get to the main point. I'd be fine with a site like the New Yorker that has more bells and whistles be included as long as I could experience it without a tracked ad from DoubleClick. Right now any serious outfi…

Totally agree. I run a few professional websites/apps that deliberately avoid tracking technologies. They only use first-party session cookies and minimal server logs for operational purposes.

Interestingly, I’ve noticed that some users find this suspicious because there's no cookie banner ! People may have become so used to seeing them that a site without one can look dubious or unprofessional. And I'm pretty sure some maintainers include them just to conform with common practice or due to legal uncertainty.

Maybe a simple, community-driven, public declaration might help. Something like a "No-Tracking Web Declaration". It could be a short document describing fair practices that websites could reference, such as "only first-party session cookies", "server logs used only for operational purposes", etc.

A website could then display a small statement such as "This site follows the No-Tracking Web Declaration v1.0". This might help legitimate the approach, and give visitors and operators confidence that avoiding usual bells and whistles can actually be compliant with applicable regulations.

I (and AI) drafted something here, contributions would be highly welcomed: https://github.com/fbilhaut/no-tracking

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#217

Post by cindyllm »

kalavan wrote: post #214
Terretta wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pamphleteering has a storied tradition. Self-publishing remains accessible today. What confuses me are the reflexive "why would I publish if I'm not getting the ad revenue" and "why would anyone take their time w/o getting paid" type remarks. Same comments about music: nobody will record songs without getting paid. And games: what's even the point in playing a shooter without dropping loot? The last one encapsulates…

Sounds like classic crowding-out of intrinsic motivation. There's a story, I can't find the page at the moment, of someone who was getting pranked all the time (his house TPed or egged or something). So he offered the miscreants $1 to do it tomorrow. He kept on doing it like this, and then a few days later, he offered a quarter. By the time he had got down to a dime, they said "there's no way we're going to do it for…

[dead]

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#218

Post by lich_king »

nottorp wrote: post #83
lich_king wrote: post #24

It's easy to hand-curate a list of 5,000 "small web" URLs. The problem is scaling. For example, Kagi has a hand-curated "small web" filter, but I never use it because far more interesting and relevant "small web" websites are outside the filter than in it. The same is true for most other lists curated by individual folks. They're neat, but also sort of useless because they are too small: 95% of the things you're look…

> The question is how do you take it to a million? Do you need to take it to a million in the same place? Is that still "small"? Why not have 2000 hand curated directories instead?

> Why not have 2000 hand curated directories instead?

It depends on what you're trying to achieve. If you want to have a personal feed of stories from interesting people, 50 is probably enough to give you some interesting daily reading. But if you want to build a "small web" search lens, you absolutely need to cover. For example, Kagi is billing a "small web" search filter, but it excludes a lot of the small web because they only allow actively-maintained blogs and only a subset of them.

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#219

Post by 101008 »

Terretta wrote: post #205
technothrasher wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My similar happy childhood moment was when my home page made the Netscape "Rants and Raves" page for my extensive tribute to Lindsey Wagner (the actress who played the Bionic Woman), and that leading to my local newspaper interviewing me for an article on what the heck this "World Wide Web" was. I went on and on about how the web was revolutionary as an equalizer, allowing anybody to publish and actually be heard wit…

Pamphleteering has a storied tradition. Self-publishing remains accessible today. What confuses me are the reflexive "why would I publish if I'm not getting the ad revenue" and "why would anyone take their time w/o getting paid" type remarks. Same comments about music: nobody will record songs without getting paid. And games: what's even the point in playing a shooter without dropping loot? The last one encapsulates…

> What confuses me are the reflexive "why would I publish if I'm not getting the ad revenue" and "why would anyone take their time w/o getting paid" type remarks.

I published free content during the 90s and early 2000s in the internet, so I lived through that moment when you write something just for the pleasure of it. What I think it changed is that back at the time, it was you and your keyboard and that was your gun. The best content (that is, the best idea+writing) won. People would share in forums, MSN, emails, with friends, etc. It was more democratic in the sense that we were all equal.

Today that doesn't work anymore. You can write a very good piece but no one will discover it because the behaviour has changed. You probably will have to invest in ads, or being someone already known in the topic, etc. And I am talking before AI, with all the AI noise/slop/content, it's impossible today. So if I am going to fight against big media who are also writing shitting content about the same topics, or Instagram influencers who are posting silly memes, and I need to invest money, may as well try to earn something back.

PS: I may write an article about it.

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#220

Post by unsungNovelty »

sylware wrote: post #207
unsungNovelty wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey!!!!! That is my website! To be fair, the hard part is hard to keep a personal website regularly updated without making people think it's abandoned. I don't have a regular post cadence. So it looks like I don't touch the website at all for months. But I regularly update my posts and other sections event if there isn't any new posts. I also wrote something similar to OP - https://www.unsungnovelty.org/posts/10/2024…

Sadely this search engine is now javascript only. So the "small" web...

Couple of things.

1. No. It's not javascript only. https://old-search.marginalia.nu/ is still available. It is also mentioned in https://about.marginalia-search.com/article/redesign/ as gonna be there for a very long time.

2. I don't think just because it uses javascript make it bad. It's a very nice site now. I prefer it better than old version. My website doesn't use JS for any functionality yet. But I've never said never either. The reason hasn't arised that I need to use JS. The day it does, I will use it.

But I understand the sentiment though. I used to be a no js guy before. But I've been softened by the need to use it professionally only to think --- hmmm, not bad.

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