[gopher] Re: basic newb info

[Rich Roberts <rich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 14 Aug 2005, at 19:11, Tom Copley wrote:

>
>
>> We probably ought to have a FAQ/Wiki or something about this.
>>
>> --
>>
>
> John,
>
> This is an excellent idea.  I recently joined this mailing list,  
> but have
> been seriously thinking about doing something like a world of  
> gopherspace
> wiki.  I've browsed some of the material on complete.org, and  
> realize that
> you've gone to very great lengths to open up information about what  
> many
> (who even know about it today) regard as essentially a dead  
> medium.  I buy
> into the argument that gopher can make a comeback as a completely
> non-commercial medium for information without the popups and over- 
> bloated,
> gratuitous eye-candy of the WWWeb--or, in the immortal words of  
> Sargent
> Joe Friday of TV's _Dragnet_, "Just the facts, ma'am."
> <http://www.timstvshowcase.com/dragnet.html>.

I couldn't agree more. I'm on a bit of a retro thing at the moment  
(slrn for news, working on getting pine to
co-exist with mail.app + a gopher server ( gopher.multijoy.com, not  
much content as yet, but at least it's there))

It all seems so much cleaner, to my mind. Might be worth pushing the  
accessibility point? screen readers love it,
text is easily magnified/contrasted etc.

>
> Starting in January of 1994, I taught an online workshop called the
> "Go-pher-it Workshop" which introduced many thousands of librarians,
> educators and students to the WWG (wonderful world of gopher). See
> <http://lawlibrary.ucdavis.edu/LAWLIB/jun94/0019.html>.  It's very  
> funny
> to go back and read over the ad for this workshop, because so much  
> of it
> sounds anachronic and gopher-hypish. In 1994 some of us naively  
> believed
> that gopher literally could become a furry terror and conquer the  
> world.
> Our hopes were completely dashed on the rocks though almost before  
> the end
> of the year.  By yearend of 1994 Lynx (aptly named as a predator) was
> already gaining considerable ground on the gopher clients as it could
> browse both gopher and web servers. The alpha releases of Mosaic  
> 2.0 were
> picking up speed throughout that year as HTML forms, tables and  
> many other
> innovations were added. By 1995 it was all over for the lovable furry
> varmint except the swan song.  From the standpoint of gopher, the  
> advent
> of the Web was really a sickening sight to behold.  However, it was an
> exciting time to be in. It was quite obvious even at the time that  
> the WWW
> was going to completely reshape the world of online media.
>

Interestingly, my first forays onto the web were around that time. I  
think it may have even been gopher that first got
me past the wonderful world of compuspend... Then I was hypnotised by  
a malicious <blink> tag, and that was that.


>
> Gopherspace wiki--good idea or bad?  Or, is it better to leave  
> sleeping
> dogs lie?  How do you feel about it? I'm really trying to decide in my
> heart if I want to do this--it could be a lot of work. Feel free to  
> email
> me off list.
>


I'm all for a one-stop resource. If you need a hand (proofing,  
editing, whatever), let me know.

Rich
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