on discoverability

> maybe big search engines are a rich people thing. maybe small-scale discoverability comes from conversations, and links, and aggregators, and community.

this is something i had brought up in irc recently, but i haden't really thought about it until /after/ i mentioned it. it takes a /lot/ of power to run a decent search engine. i'm only assuming, but that's the way it feels sometimes.

rolls

search engines are extremely handy at times, but i think my favourite method for discovering content is via "rolls". a roll is a collection of links that you find particularly useful or cool. you could have a roll of friends, or a roll of sources to find information, or a roll that's just a big jumble of everything.

rolls are not a new thing. most people probably know about them, or even have them, but i just wanted to mention that i /really/ appreciate it when other people put rolls on their gemini pages that link to /more/ cool gemini pages, so it makes a very pleasent rabbit hole of cool content to sift through!

a roll can also be thought of as a "public bookmark list". you can link cool articles that you found helpful, or whatever. anything that interests you would probably interest other people!

rings

i really like rings. a ring is a particular group of capsules, and at the very bottom of each capsule on the ring, there's a link to the next / previous capsule on that ring! some rings are small, some are large.

i'm not on a ring right now, because i prefer my capsule being cleaner, but i do enjoy hopping around rings sometimes, when i find them!

aggregators

an aggregator takes a bunch of links from all over, and bundles them together so that you don't have to go to all your friends' capsules to see if they posted a new article!

i'm on capcom and the spacewalk, both of which are really cute aggregators. my gemlog has an atom feed, which you should have too, since it lets people add you to their feed reader! i'd talk more about atom, but i'm tired right now...

conclusion

so, what's my point? i can't remember. i think it was like, trying to poke at the idea that we don't /really/ need search engines at all, and it might even make the internet more fun if i stayed away from them...

although, when it comes to the web, wiby.me is cute, but again, maybe i'll stick to the rolls n rings for a while and see how it goes!

may 01, 2021