A few days ago, cmccabe asked "what

websites do you like on the www? In

particular, what lesser known websites

do you like?"[1] I've been considering

a response since then. It's a

difficult question. There's not much

on the web that I would recommend to

anyone. I read a few news sites, keep

up with a couple of forums, and watch

some 'TV' on the web.

My favourite non-commercial websites

were both produced by the same person,

the mysterious K.Mandla, whose "Motho

ke motho ka botho" and "Inconsolation"

were long-running blogs about

minimalist computing on old

laptops.[2] I still return to those

sites occasionally. They're

comfortable, informative, and written

in a relaxed, conversational style. If

K.Mandla's blogging anywhere else now,

I'd love to know about it. Maybe -- I

like to think this is true -- K.Mandla

is one of you.

It's very hard to find that kind of

thoughtful, personal site amidst all

of the noise and traffic of the world

wide web. It also seems like search

engines don't turn up that kind of

small-scale site the way that they

used to. I've found in the last year

(maybe? maybe it's been longer and I

didn't notice) that Google must be

truncating search results in some way.

A search often turns up a few pages of

major sites and then a "that's all

there is" message. As a result, I've

turned to alternatives. Shockingly,

the best one (and I am aware of

DuckDuckGo, Startpage, Searx.me and

others) in terms of allowing me to

page through reams of obscure content

seems to be Bing! Against my better

instincts, it's now my go-to search

engine -- with javascript disabled

(unless I need to use the date-range

feature).

I think that's why I was drawn to the

pubnix/gophersphere. We can still find

each other here. But more than that,

it's clear that we post content

because we value that content and want

to communicate with one another, not

because we're all aiming to make a

dollar or become internet celebrities.

That was part of the joy of K.Mandla's

blogs. K.Mandla wasn't after fame or

fortune. They clearly valued anonymity

and there were never (as far as I

know) any referral links or ads in the

blogs. If one had appeared, it would

have seemed so strange and out of

place. I think everyone who followed

the blogs would have been taken aback

because they were personal -- a labour

of love -- and not, as it seems so

much of the web has become, an

impersonal effort to exploit the

medium and the audience for some kind

of individual gain.

So, along with cmccabe, I'm interested

in hearing about your obscure,

non-commercial web favourites.

[1] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/%7ecmccabe/20-noncommercial-www.txt

[2] https://kmandla.wordpress.com/

https://inconsolation.wordpress.com/