Re: [gopher] History and future of "the gopher project"

[kaltheat@googlemail.com]

Hi,

first of all: Thanks for the answers so far.

After roughly a week later I would like to sum up the previous discussion.
(Eventhough I assume that anyone could reread the mails I would consider a
 summary summing up the basics to be nice and refreshing ;) )

To recall it to memory I first asked these questions:

What was "the gopher project"?
What is "the gopher project"?
How is "the gopher project" related to Debian (the mailing list runs on a
debian domain)?
What should "the gopher project" be?

I got answers for the second question:
"The gopher project" _is_ the name for the mailing list (Brian Koontz, Mateusz
Viste) and there _is_ no actual project (Nuno Silva).

Then I got an answer for the the third question:
The mailing list was setup by John Goerzen who was very active in the past in
gopherspace and due to other projects that have higher priority he got less
active in gopherspace and moved the list from his servers/domain to debian
servers/domain (because he is a debian dev he had opportunities to do so) (Jeff
W).
This answer kind of lead to another discussion that (from my point of view)
had nothing to do with the original thread in the first place (mailing list vs.
newsgroup and how to merge them ...). Nonetheless this other discussion is also
interresting and should come to a solution ;)

Then there were some links to archive material or link lists with plenty of
things about gopher. I don't want to say that they weren't interresting. Not
at all! I think they are interresting and I go through them from time to time.
But I don't think that they are sufficient answer to the first question. The
first question was intended to reveal the meaning of the term and not gopher's
overall history.
I hoped that some "old hand" (who maybe even is a witness of the time the
term "the gopher project" came up) could explain the former meaning of "the
gopher project" to a greenhorn (me).

And then there was the last question to which almost nobody had something to
say (Brian Koontz replied to my rough draft of the future "gopher project"
that this is something already covered by the mailing list, the IRC channel
and people carrying the gopher torch).
Does this mean that almost anybody likes it the way it is? A "project" being
nothing than a mailing list???
Maybe some people think it isn't worth to express their ideas/wishes for a
future _real_ project, because it seems impossible to realize them. But (to me)
these are seperate steps: ideas can be as absurd as possible and after all
ideas were collected one could argue about whether it's possible or not to
realize them ...

So, from a gopher beginner's perspective the most important things a real
gopher project should provide (in future) are
  - a central gopherhole containing almost anything interresting for newbies
    of all kind, like:
      - first steps tutorial
      - FAQs
      - HowTos (how to setup up a gopherhole, how to setup a server, ...)
      - list of (actively maintained) gopher server software
      - list of (actively maintained) gopher client software
      - nice to have: comparission tables of features of servers/clients
      - link list to (actively maintained) gopher projects (like GopherMole,
        Gopherpedia, Weather Forecasts, ...)
      - link list of the most popular gopherholes
  - official communication channels (like mailing list, newsgroup, irc)

Most of these informations already are available, but they are spread all over
gopherspace and there is much redundancy. Sometimes there are documents
covering the same thing on different gopherholes, but they have different
versions (for example FAQs) or work was done twice, because originators didn't
know that there was already a similiar document, etc. Sometimes links are
broken ... There seems to be almost no reviewing process.

I would be delighted if you want to share your ideas for a future real project
and that you don't hesistate to answer just because of the fact that I'm a
greenhorn ;) And again: Maybe this already was discussed somewhere and there is
no need to discuss it again. Then please give me a hint (not too harsh ;) ).

Regards,
kaltheat


_______________________________________________
Gopher-Project mailing list
Gopher-Project@lists.alioth.debian.org
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gopher-project