Hey. So as major platforms start to fall apart, don't necessarily look for the next big one.
Dust off your blog.
Go back to establishing web-rings.
RSS feeds. Remember those?
This is the way to share good stuff. You don't need a centralized platform for that.
As hams, we should know that.
Hope upon hope, that ham radio clubs abandon their FaceBook bullshit, and go freshen up the website they've been ignoring for YEARS.
Depends on the forum. Not all of them allow for searching and keep things where we can see them in the future. There's so much bad forum software out there that create doors where we need windows.
@KC8JC agreed on all points.
how about a decentralized NNTP network designed so hams can post to discussion groups over packet radio, if they so desire, too?
i'm working on server software called #tomo. it's a user-owned and operated bulletin board system, that syncs up with other tomo servers across a network.
blog/info here: http://tomo.city
i'd really, really like to make supporting hams a central part of it, if there is interest in having discussion groups without the centralized platform BS.
@vga256 @KC8JC NNTP over 1200 Baud AFSK #packetradio with AX.25 encapsulated IPv4 is really slow and inefficient, let's move on from 1975 technology ;)
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/inn/ is a popular #NNTP server software used by a number of large servers that I know a little bit about. Should work well via AREDN/HamWAN/HAMNET as those networks are IPv4-native
Yeah...this toot has been shared a LOT! Kinda funny to see it bounce around.
@KC8JC
I never understood the thing where hams used Windows apps, then I realized that open source wasn't that prevalent among hardware folk.
I think the Facebook sites are a by product of the "I don't understand software" generation.
At defcon in 2013, I saw the inked kids with piercings studying for their exam, I realized that there was a shift in #HamRadio , it was no longer about how far or how many contacts, it was about how many apps or how much traffic you could run.
I
@oatmeal had an incredible post about this a while ago.
- https://theoatmeal.com/comics/reaching_people
- https://theoatmeal.com/comics/reaching_people_2021
Article about the tweets:
https://www.geekwire.com/2017/oatmeal-creator-rips-facebook-comic-facebook-asks-wants-boost-post/
https://nitter.net/Oatmeal/status/923250055540219904
#QT - https://bird.makeup/users/Oatmeal/statuses/923250055540219904
@gabri IMO those were a bit hit and miss. It was like Stubmleupon, but more localised. I was a lot into web comics back in the days and both, as a user and web site owner I didn't find the web rings to drive in that much traffic.
Search engines were insanely more effective, especially before SEO went insane. You could literally have the topic of your web site in the page name and people interested in that would flock in. Soon after it was just a swamp of "portal" sites fighting for the keywords
@KC8JC I'm a lapsed ham. I did great on the theory, but when it came to speaking I was worried I'd be stepping on toes... so I let it lapse. Chalk it up to my specific mix of #ActuallyAutistic traits.
I've used RSS a ton. I don't ever plan to get back to it.
Mastodon is my RSS now. Why?
* Curation. RSS feeds that curate news stories do exist, but this brings me to my second point.
* Discoverability. It was hard to discover good RSS feeds.
It seems to me Mastodon (or the Fediverse if you want to take a wider look) is much better than RSS ever was.
I agree with your points and it's all dependent upon what you're trying to accomplish.
I'm looking for a way to curate information in a durable fashion. Writing something up about a piece of gear or solving a problem with software and giving that a place to live where it can be retrieved in 3 or 4 years time. My argument is that looking for yet another giant social network platform owned by a single entity is a bad idea.
@KC8JC I'm thinking that the real way we get around this is by creating a new way of interfacing with the Internet that is harder to capture.
Mastodon compared to Facebook or Twitter is a good example. There are still shortcomings here, but one can imagine an evolution of these systems that is engaging in a way that is healthy and that doesn't require the difficult infrastructure.
We have now hopefully seen the limitation of offloading this function to a big corporation, but less fortunate is the reality of how challenging it is to create a thing that is both healthy for people and keeps them interested in it, doesn't go bankrupt, and cannot be taken over in some way... I don't think it's impossible, but I definitely think it's hard and a never ending fight.
@KC8JC Yeah, I really need to get my amateur license. And start blogging again. Thanks for the inspiration.
... are there any usable RSS readers out there? In ye olde days I was fond of the one in KDE (forgot the name, kaggregator?), but I could not find any other good program. Something always annoyed me...
@KC8JC Post an OPML file of your RSS subscriptions somewhere obvious.
@KC8JC
You can also follow any Mastodon account as an RSS feed by adding .rss to the end of the profile address.
I just tested this in Thunderbird by following myself.
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