Bihosting

Some of my posts here are only on the web in a shortened form, or there but unlisted (unlisted like this post you’re reading now: it didn’t go out on my web feeds or linked from my web /texts page, but if you go to the web version of this URL, there’s a page there), or not there at all, only on Gemini, but I’d guess that 95% of them are. “Bihosting”, they call it; having your post on two of Gemini, web, gopher. And “trihosting” is all three. I’m not on gopher though.

Sometimes when I talk to people who have abandoned Gemini, they say “well, the logs I were reading were also on the web” as one of their reasons.

Good for them! But I can’t say the same. Some of my faves are, that’s true, but more than half of what I read in here isn’t. Wait, that comes across as an argument against bihosting and for smolnet exclusivity, which would be hypocritical since I do bihost and plan to continue to do so for the foreseeable.

When I post gem-only stuff it’s never to “increase the value” of Gemini or have secret easter eggs or whatever. The only things I elide are things that wouldn’t make sense to web people, references to geminaut culture, replies to posts etc (and even then I sometimes do include it). I wanna make the capsule as good as it can be for Gemini, and the website as good as it can be for the web.

So the reason I love Gemini isn’t the exclusivity. It’s that it’s such a great place to read stuff and browse around knowing it’s not all ads and tracking and scams. It’s just honest text.

Most of my Gemini reading I do via a script that turns Gemini stuff into Atom. I read it alongside things from Fedi (“threadiverse” especially) and other Atom and RSS feeds. Great. But only on Gemini do I feel like I can freely browse around.

parabola

Why I don’t have to leave Gemini

If you’re looking for more of an advice post on bihosting, see here:

Bihost Gemini first