20
votes
Gemini protocol
I’ve just heard of the new BBS style forum for Gemini space and wondered if the properties of Tildes could adequately translate to Gemini space. In other words; could Tildes become accessible in Gemini space?
gemini://bbs.geminispace.org/
I’m also curious if there are other Gemini users here but that might be better off as a separate post on a different section of the site.
Gemini is, frankly speaking, masturbatory necrocomputing (name borrowed from geoff langdale), its use of tls being one of the more obvious factors which belies its anachronism as empty nostalgia (rather than a carefully-crafted attempt to make something better that takes into account positive aspects of designs older and newer)—a friend gives some more discussion (howbeit somewhat abrasively and ramblingly). I see no reason to engage with it.
Spartan is essentially Gemini without the TLS. They’re very compatible.
I'm not entirely sure how usable nested replies would be under the limitations of Gemtext. And I'm not sure if Tildes' focus on long form discussion would work with a protocol that doesn't support multi line text input. If you wanted to make a forum in Gemini then it really needs to be built within the protocol as opposed to having the protocol grafted on afterwards.
That said I do wonder what people are talking about on there nowadays... (Surely everyone's moved on from discussion about the proto itself and onto "real" topics that aren't retro computing adjacent, right?) Maybe I should fire up my old client and have a look. It's not like the spec would've changed substantially since then.
edit: huh, my site is still on the "first 50 gemini hosts" list despite not hosting a gemini capsule for a while now. that's surprising
I implemented Gemini link preview on my IRC bot a while back purely because of the meltdown the community had over the favicons of one of the tabbed Gemini browsers. It was used a handful of times since then, and I hoped it annoyed the people who thinks a favicon is breaking the spec.
This is the GitHub issue that inspired me: https://github.com/makew0rld/amfora/issues/199
Ah yes, a classic ddevault thread.
He has chilled out a pinch I believe. But, not by much.
Yeah, that's incredible to me. I'll be honest, I would not want to interact with or associate with people who behave the way he did in that issue thread.
Left a sour taste in my mouth too. I like some of what Sourcehut does but, man, drew comes off terribly there. And I saw similar behavior in recent discussions related to a Mastodon bug, so idk about chilled out 😅
I found the protocol impoverished, the community to be strident and a bit hostile, and the content to all be samey. If I were interested in a vaguely left anarchist echo chamber then I guess Gemini would be the place, but there's many such places on the internet. The last thing I want my web to be is a place with content as narrow as Gemini's.
I have used gemini since the early days. I think a read-only version of tildes would be neat to have. I have accessed many sites like lobste.rs this way for years. As someone else mentioned, an interactive front-end that accommodates nested comments may not be comfortable or practical (depending on your attitude), but a traditional bbs-style chronolgical forum is viable. Several already exist, such as the one you linked, which is the latest and greatest to emerge.
I know there are many other users and server operators here, but I don't want the call them out :)
Very cool. Checking it out now.
Haven’t been on Gemini in a few months but have been meaning to get back. This looks like may give me a reason to visit more regularly
Discovered Gemini a couple months ago thanks to Tildes, been using it pretty regularly since. I love the BBS, some good discussions on it.