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I'm relatively new to a web that is smol/self-hosted. I'm enjoying the experience, so thank you. I've run into an issue (feature?), and wonder how you all dealt with it: Ephemerality. There is content on the fedi/smol web that could be lost forever.
On the www, there's quite a bit of redundancy. If I can't find the article/story I'm looking for on one site, a quick search reveals multiple places that it's been backed up. I can't really think of many things that have been "lost" on the modern web. (With a few exceptions. RIP elfwood. RIP geocities. And even then, much of the content I cared about is available elsewhere).
Yet here in geminispace, if someone's self-hosted capsule goes down... it's gone. There isn't much by way of backup, and even if it's backed up somewhere, it's not serachable that I'm aware of. If someone dies, the capsule won't let us know, or be accessible indefinitely. Some content might simply be lost forever. This is an issue/feature that attends the federated / distributed web. (I say 'feature' because perhaps the capacity to be forgotten isn't all bad).
Practical case in point: I was browsing around geminispace a while back when I first started exploring. I found a very interesting short story about a Grammarian, Logician, and Rhetorician, who entered some kind of Existential space where the words they said became truth/reality. If they said "there is a ball hovering 6 feet above the ground" ... it happened. In the end, they goof up and say something dumb and speak themselves out of existence. This was philosophically interesting. But now... I can't find the story again! It might have been hosted on spam.works, or some other place that isn't around anymore.
I wanted to share with a friend who might like this sort of thing, but I can't locate it. Oh well. IRL, this sort of thing happens regularly. Online, it's rare enough that I'm writing about it here to ask if you've experienced the same thing. Do I need like... some kind of emotional coping mechanism for not being able to find stuff online ? lol
I suppose the questions are twofold: a) Does anyone know the short story I'm talking about, and where to find it again? and b) What do you think about the ephemerality of a distributed/federated web, smol or otherwise? Is this a bug or a feature? How do you handle this idea?
Mar 25 · 8 weeks ago · 👍 norayr, gemalaya, 3curtain
a) No.
b) A feature.
But in general, if you know the URL (browser favs or history), you can try
Kennedy crawls the Geminispace every coupple fo weeks, so there's a chance it could be missing. And when it's not there, then the site owner might excercised their right in b) and have indicated in their robots.txt, that archiving is not welcome.
Ephemerality is an illusion. Everything you say and do is stored in FedSpace and will be used against you at a time of Their choosing.
The question is whether the plebs get to access the material. It's nice to have the option of being forgotten by pitchfork and torch carrying mobs. On the other hand, it's terrible to not be able to revisit something you just saw last week.
The best solution for you is to save things you come across. Lagrange saves everything in one folder with names like "2024 03 01" and no way of knowing the origins of the files, adding a whole new layer of mystery.
Lots of stuff is gone from the web and gone from Archive.org. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been collecting stuff from the web that’s gone or soon to be gone, converting to GemText and storing it in my capsule.
Hello:
I feel slightly strange to see your post, since I didn't think anyone read my capsule. All the same, that was an article I used to link to. It is not my writing; it was originally created in the SCP community, but deleted when the author left the site.
gemini://tilde.pink/~eriounious/inoti.gmi Here is the link.
I apologize for taking it down. I'm glad that you liked it.
I think you aren’t that familiar with the web. A LOT of content ends up lost because it never makes it into Archive.org and people respect the author’s wishes not to copy.
Entire domains of knowledge have basically vanished. Try to learn about the BBS scene in Japan in the 1980s and 1990s. Almost everything is gone from the web and the people who remember it are dying off.
Chinese FidoNet knowledge is going the same way. It was the first text-based mass communication system in China and it’s gone. I’ve been collecting bits and pieces of what I can find to preserve in my capsule.
There is so much being lost and not being preserved at all. If you care about something: copy it.
@eriounious - oh WOW thank you so much! I had given up on finding it. It's a neat story. I liked it for the logic bits, and for the classical trivium references (in fact, it was a trivium search query that led me to your capsule...?). I didn't know anything about SCP, but got the chance to explore that site as well. Very interesting. Thanks again. :)
@eriounious - oh WOW thank you so much! I had given up on finding it. It's a neat story. I liked it for the logic bits, and for the classical trivium references (in fact, it was a trivium search query that led me to your capsule...?). I didn't know anything about SCP, but got the chance to explore that site as well. Very interesting. Thanks again. :)
@blah_blah_blah - well the feds didn't give it to me either, unless eriounious is a fed. I even asked all manner of GPT's to locate the story for me (since they've come from search engines), and even those couldn't figure it out. So the smolweb is, for the time being, off their radar.
@istvan - I think you've got the right of it. Not all info is useful or worth saving, but this experience has taught me a lot.
If what Plato said ("writing will be the death of memory") is true, how much more is the impression of eternal data security going to prevent the development of human memory? Living in the eternal present of a scrolling "feed" isn't good for the human mind, not to mention the soul.
They've done studies on what students retain... apparently we feel like we learn more when we read a textbook on a screen, but in general students retain data better when reading in a physical book. I wonder how it would have gone if the data had been presented in a gopher/gemini like format... contrasting a infinite-scroll data presentation with a pseudosense of "place" that you find in "following" a gopherhole. Maybe we would be more likely to engage alpha-brainwaves and think critically when we're connecting knowledge-acquisition to a sense of place, instead of an 'ephemeral flickering feed.'
( @blah_blah_blah - I mean empheral here with respect to our experience of it, rather than the feds. )
Not every byte is worth saving, but libraries/collections of data curated by intelligent human beings has historically been a real benefit for humanity. Think about the tragedy of the library of Alexandria, or what those celtic(?) monastaries managed to preserve in the middle ages.
Why isn't there a gutenberg.org mirror in geminispace? Is there? There should be. I don't mean the "self publish your own stuff" section of gutenberg, but the actual texts upon which everyone is hoping to progress mankind forward.
Maybe this deserves its own post in s/permacomputing or someplace similar.
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