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Ooh.directory: a place to find good blogs that interest you

ooh.directory

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Re: Ooh.directory: a place to find good blogs that interest you

#81

Post by gnramires »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #6

A good idea, and one I had myself recently. Some suggestions: I know none of us like "the algorithms choosing", but I think we can do better than alphabetical order. Number of clicks you see (popularity), or number of inbound links google tells you about would be good. I also think you've gone to great effort, but it's still very light in some categories. I hope you keep going - what's your data source? Are you track…

I like the idea of some kind of algorithm minimalism, or at least parsimony; but I also think sometimes it might be appropriate? In this case, another approach would simply be randomization, which doesn't favor any name (Aaaaaron Aaaaanderson's blog :P ), this randomization can be consistent (such that you can find something you wish in linear time).

I think equally important is algorithmic transparency, that is, that the algorithm be publicly disclosed (although I think simplicity is a component of transparency: if you just dump a huge incomprehensible algorithmic mess somewhere that's not very helpful), so that you at least know what you are getting into, and better yet have some ability to choose and make educated critique of the current state of things (i.e. does the algorithm just maximize engagement like a slot machine? or does it optimize for some kind of helpfulness?).

Re: Ooh.directory: a place to find good blogs that interest you

#82

Post by dpkirchner »

tinyhouse wrote: post #61
philgyford wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, it’s my site. I’m sorry you don’t feel this hobby site run by one person doesn’t have a sufficiently transparent process. The process is: I add blogs that are interesting, recently-updated, etc, when I have time. And there’s only so much of that in life. Another problem is that I like to add a variety of sites so that people following what’s recently added don’t get swamped by loads of blogs on one topic. And las…

fyi, I just signed up and the confirmation email went to my spam folder (Gmail).

I'm not the site owner but it might help to share some of the content you'll see in Gmail when you hit "show original". That'll show things like SPF and DMARC pass/fail.

Re: Ooh.directory: a place to find good blogs that interest you

#83

Post by philgyford »

zahlman wrote: post #77

I'm not sure about the orange on dark green colour scheme, but I like that the site is responsive and light-weight, and manages to show a bunch of fancy effects in pure CSS. I was surprised that Simon Willison's blog is listed in Python and Web Development categories, but not AI.

That’s one problem with categorising blogs - they often shift focus over time, like Simon’s. I’ve added it to the AI category now - thanks for pointing that out!

Re: Ooh.directory: a place to find good blogs that interest you

#84

Post by philgyford »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #6

A good idea, and one I had myself recently. Some suggestions: I know none of us like "the algorithms choosing", but I think we can do better than alphabetical order. Number of clicks you see (popularity), or number of inbound links google tells you about would be good. I also think you've gone to great effort, but it's still very light in some categories. I hope you keep going - what's your data source? Are you track…

Thanks for the kind words. The source is user suggestions and my own searching and browsing.

I do sort of track outbound links, so that I can show which domains a blog links to most, which can sometimes give a sense of what the blog is about.

But, while I haven’t analysed the data, I suspect the links from one blog to another would be a very tiny percentage of the overall outbound links. It’s the kind of thing that might have been more interesting/useful in the olden days of blogging when more people linked to each other, and replied to each other, via blogs rather than social media.

Re: Ooh.directory: a place to find good blogs that interest you

#85

Post by philgyford »

deadbabe wrote: post #78

Please considered sorting websites by last updated date by default, instead of alphabetical which is a pretty useless method of presentation. It works better for books and static pages, not dynamic internet content.

It’s not “useless” it just depends on what it is a user is looking for. I decided that alphabetical as default makes most immediate sense to someone arriving at the site. “Last updated” could also look a bit random initially.

Re: Ooh.directory: a place to find good blogs that interest you

#86

Post by cosmicgadget »

sofayam wrote: post #42
cosmicgadget wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My buddy and I are building an index with a category interface like this one (and indieseek.xyz). We index anything we consider authentic and contentful, but our category interface (mostly) consists of small web pages. Happy to hear any feedback. Link: https://outerweb.org/explore-sorted

Strange, I looked around and couldn’t find a single contentful or authentic site in your index, rather the opposite.

I appreciate the observation, there's automated and manual curation that goes into this so there's definitely corpo stuff that shows up. We probably made things more difficult by wanting to include mainstream sources but heavily favor indie ones.

We have substantial lists of approved and denied domains so the authentic content is definitely there but it's not visible from a few clicks off of the categories page, we have more work to do.

Re: Ooh.directory: a place to find good blogs that interest you

#87

Post by philgyford »

Kye wrote: post #69
philgyford wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, it’s my site. I’m sorry you don’t feel this hobby site run by one person doesn’t have a sufficiently transparent process. The process is: I add blogs that are interesting, recently-updated, etc, when I have time. And there’s only so much of that in life. Another problem is that I like to add a variety of sites so that people following what’s recently added don’t get swamped by loads of blogs on one topic. And las…

>> Another problem is that I like to add a variety of sites so that people following what’s recently added don’t get swamped by loads of blogs on one topic. And last time the site got on HN the suggestions (not “submissions”) were swamped with mostly men with rarely-updated blogs about computers. Essentially my trouble with every "share your blog" type thing that appears on HN. Some of the blogs do show some interest…

Yeah, from a HN point of view I imagine most blogs are tech blogs. But for me, trying to curate a wider selection, tech blogs should be a very small minority. There are so many non-tech categories that I’m much more interested in populating, never mind categories that don’t even exist yet. A real joy is finding a niche topic where there are loads of current blogs, all linking to each other. Blogspot is full of that kind of thing.

Re: Ooh.directory: a place to find good blogs that interest you

#88

Post by philgyford »

throwaway150 wrote: post #28
7bit wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then what? You're looking at a list of hundreds of submissions and why they have been added or not added, which completely defeats the purpose of that website. I don't get the point of these sites, because it I want a curated list, I visit the front page of hackernews or reddit -- and trust the system. Ohh.directory I'd the same thing, except for a different selection process. You either trust it or you don't.

> You either trust it or you don't. don't see why it has to be this way. It doesn't take much to tell us what the review process is like and what gets added and what does not. If I know in advance that the blogs I submit are outside their scope, then I won't waste time submitting them. I also don't see why there can't be an open directory of websites where the community makes decisions about what to add instead of le…

Give it a rest. The scope is in the FAQ. Blogs get added when I have time.

As you can tell from the site, there are many, many suggestions and I’m not finding time to add many new blogs https://ooh.directory/about/charts/

There is no guarantee any blog you suggest, even if it’s in “scope”, will get added before either of us die. If that’s a problem save yourself all this angst and don’t suggest anything.

Re: Ooh.directory: a place to find good blogs that interest you

#89

Post by freetonik »

throwaway150 wrote: post #54
freetonik wrote: post #37

I also maintain a human-curated directory (and search engine) of personal blogs at https://minifeed.net You can submit a blog here: https://minifeed.net/suggest Criteria is pretty simple: - Must be written by a human. - Must be in English (for now). - Must have a valid RSS feed. - Must not be purely a "micro-blog", i.e. must have some content other than tweet-sized status updates or links.

This looks great. Your https://minifeed.net/about page is really nice too. Well done! You should make it a top level post if you haven't already

I've been meaning to do this for a year now, still feel like there are things to improve before I do that :)

Re: Ooh.directory: a place to find good blogs that interest you

#90

Post by rubyfan »

ooh this reminds me of the old internet. Altavista, Yahoo, etc. all had lists like this!

It's fun to click about and go down the rabbit hole of things I might not normally see in my daily routine which is now mostly about avoiding the hellscape of the modern internet.

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