New Page: Link Recommendations: I’ve just added a new Link Recommendations page, inspired by a post by @lori. …
Read the rest: https://michaelhans.com/eclecticism/2024/04/29/new-page-link-recommendations/ (#Links #NewYahoo #weblogs)
I've just added a new Link Recommendations page, inspired by a post by @[email protected].
@lori I had been thinking about creating a page of links that I could use as a place to keep articles I thought were useful. Your post got me to actually do it. Starting with just a few, but here you go!
Some time ago I floated a concept I called #NewYahoo. I want to put this idea out there again. It's not a new or unique idea, but I really want to explain my thought process behind how I see it.
As I've posted a million times, search is irreparably broken. Finding solid information about a topic is harder and harder. I think the only way we can fix this is to go back to relying on human curation.
The Yahoo model (not unique to Yahoo, but it's a relatable example for people my age) was having a directory of websites based on topics. You go to the anime section, you get links to various anime websites. There wasn't an infinite slop of fake blog results.
Now, I know some directories like this still exist, or are being made, and I think that's great! But actually, #NewYahoo, a name I pulled out of my ass just to get some people thinking about it, is kind of a misnomer. Because what I am proposing right now is NOT that. It's a little different. My guiding philosophy here is that if our goal was to build a New Yahoo, we are going to spend all day discussing the best way to code the site, the best way to run it, how to deal with submissions, etc...and right now the internet house is on fire. We can't be thinking of elaborate solutions, webrings vs wikis vs whatever, we need to be getting everything out of the burning building FIRST. We need to be gathering what resources we can while we can still try to find them, or still have them in our bookmarks, or still remember URLs.
So my proposal was, and still is, simple. Do you have a personal website? Or just anywhere you can share some links? Make a page full of links to resources for things you care about. Even better, include dead links if they can be accessed via Wayback, because a search engine sure as hell won't give you those, and information is information. Then link to other people's lists of links. And don't just link to their list of links, steal the links your list doesn't have yet. Redundancy is vital here because you don't want useful links to just be in one place or you have problems again if a site goes down. But it's still good to link to their lists in case they add new things later. Make a giant interconnected web of resources and get the word out in spaces you're in for those topics that you've got a wealth of information gathered, and encourage others to do the same. Basically like a decentralized webring in a way, where no one person has to be maintaining it.
My own page, where so far I've only been gathering useful PalmOS sites so far, is here as an example: https://d-shoot.net/resources.html
We can argue all day about how to make this kind of project, how to make a meta site that hosts all of these link archives or whatever. But right now we need to get our links out of the burning building that is the modern internet. That's the focus, and that's what I hope I can encourage more of you to do. And with this being fedi, I bet a lot of you already are doing this! And I bet the ones that aren't yet are sitting on a goldmine of actual usable information, and that's becoming more and more scarce. Let's get our information out there!
Thanks to suggestions including but not limited to http://allaboutfrogs.org, the number of links on https://fetch.quest has grown to more than two dozen.
Do you know of (or maintain) a human curated list of resources on some topic of interest? I want to know about it! 
Could be almost anything... home repair, astronomy, cooking, climate change, health, knitting, electronics, gardening, programming, woodworking, birding, music, privacy and security, etc...
I'm trying to re-engage with the human curated web, and support it and help others do the same if I can.
While single resources might be great, what I'm really after is existing lists, or places like forums which have accumulated knowledge, and where people can get human answers to their questions.
And of course they should be free, not full of ads, tracking, etc.
Are there any coop/collective/community run web portals, maybe along the lines of Old Yahoo? A place where you could start a search or browse for information and find other sites that are focused on providing useful information, instead of machine generated ad revenue.
I know of Curlie (formerly DMOZ).
Related question, if you were going to build a directory of useful places to find actual information, what might you use?
I'm thinking low tech, low infrastructure. Maybe a wiki. Maybe even a static website generated with hugo and a git repo for editing. Something that will continue to work for 20 years with minimal maintenance.
This is perhaps the "curation" step of #NewYahoo proposed by @lori https://hackers.town/@lori/110605214902529942
In fact I'm going to pose this as a challenge (or a request, maybe that sounds nicer) This week, put up a page on your personal blog, gemlog, I forgot what gopher blogs are called, neocities page, neopets profile, I don't care, but put up a page with the sites you go to a lot for topics that interest you. Even one topic. Then tag it with #NewYahoo or something. I guess not "or something" we need them in one place I'm sorry that I didn't come up with something funnier but it's something anyway. Then look there and see who else is adding useful stuff for topics you like. Add the sources you found useful to your page too, or link to their page. I'd rather see a lot of repetition than not enough resources. Put the shit you assume everyone already knows about even, you wouldn't believe how many times I've had to teach people the Internet archive exists. And on that note you don't only need to find entire sites that are useful, link to a single PDF on the IA that answers every question you have about the one weird thing you're into. Because we need knowledge on the Internet right now. We need real information to combat the "make sure your squirrel nest box has enough room for them to lay their eggs" bullshit we're flooded with right now. That includes links to goddamn BOOKS at this point. We can talk about the best way to do it all day but let's just try SOMETHING to start compiling information. I'm not the person you'd want to be behind building a New Yahoo, but I know how to put links on my website, and if we can make a network of links, then whoever is up to the challenge of making such a site will have solid resources to start with.
I've got a small page with resources in/on low german, a german dialect!
I didn't create this #NewYahoo page, but it links to a giant pile of resources for creating parser-based #interactivefiction with Inform:
https://intfiction.org/t/inform-7-documentation-and-resources/3311
Tutorials
Installation
Manuals
References
Example games + source code
Organizing your work
Accessibility considerations
etc.
How to Not Lose This Post Note: Answers to many questions you may have would be found in References below, which collectively provide a lot of info not in the docs. Inform 7 10.1.2 (current, 2022-08-31) Official Inform website Docs for Inform 7 10.1 and IDE (integrated development environment) Unofficial 10.1 docs web remix Playable examples Project Index Compiler and tools docs/literate source I7 Compiler Reader’s Guide Release notes detail changes and bugfixes the 10.1 announcemen...
I've added some new links to my #NewYahoo Palm section:
http://d-shoot.net/resources.html
gemini://gemini.hackers.town/lori/resources.gmi
Michael Hanscom
Andrew Certain 
lori
Brook Miles
KD 
Punkt 🏳️⚧️
Peter M.J. Gross