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I see there being two related but distinct issues: - The desire for a simpler, quaint looking Web - The desire for discoverability on the Web that isn't so dr

I see there being two related but distinct issues: - The desire for a simpler, quaint looking Web - The desire for discoverability on the Web that isn't so driven by algorithms I love what the Web once was, aesthetically speaking, but to me the real problem is that of discoverability. There was a time where, if you built it, the audience would come. Today that is not so much the case, especially for written content which has become so heavily devalued. I would never write a blog today (especially one that is self-hosted) because I know I would spend most of my time begging for scraps. If you really want a large enough audience that your creative efforts are worthwhile, you have to churn out content. I don't want to churn anything out. One can churn out snippets, which is effectively what one does on sites like X, but then your writing has to either by pithy truisms or cringey drama. Besides, more and more people just want to consume content passively through audio and video. But then now I have to essentially put on a big production just to get my ideas out there, and for an audience that is probably less intellectually curious than those who would actually read an article. The classic Web isn't coming back until something changes about the way people discover new things. The web is no longer a place where one goes to seek information; it's where information comes to you through word-of-mouth and so-called algorithms putting content in front of you. Golden-era web was great. Now I'd just rather do my job, comment on HN, and go fishing. Actually trying to bring back the old web is like trying to bring back Jazz clubs hoping everyone will come to their senses and dance the Charleston again. No, it will always be a niche thing.

krapp 1y ago
I don't think that discovery without algorithms is possible, because the Web is essentially unstructured. Any means of discovery needs a way to organize all of that information, and then present it in a relevant way. People forget that Google was actually good at this. The problem isn't algorithms per se, but how those algorithms are implemented. Unfortunately, people coming up with alternatives tend to lean too far in the other direction - we have alternative search engines designed to exclude all sites using Javascript, for instance, which cater to people who don't want to interact with any part of the modern web, but we don't have an alternative that does what Google used to do before search became big business and simply attempt to catalog the entire web (including the parts that HN hates) and display relevant results to the end user.
- carlosjobim 1y ago
  How about hyperlinks?
  - krapp 1y ago
    Hyperlinks alone don't work for discovery as a general problem, and on a smaller scale they just push the problem up a level because you still need to discover the hyperlink. The web is just too vast and complex and they don't contain necessary semantic information. This is why the "web portal" failed and gave way to search engines, which were objectively better for the task. You need another level of abstraction over the web to make discovery work, as you do with any application to make data useful. It's little different than making queries in a database.
    - carlosjobim 1y ago
      I find that hyperlinks work very well currently. You read something of interest on one page, and discover more information through hyperlinks to other pages. That also works great for books. Almost every book I read mentions other related books within the content, and from there you discover more and more.
      - krapp 1y ago
        Hyperlinks don't help for discovering that page to begin with, or related material not specifically being linked to from that page. Given that you're on Hacker News, it's likely your use case for the web isn't typical.
        carlosjobim 1y ago
        Well how would you discover Google? Everybody starts somewhere
        krapp 1y ago
        It's much easier to discover Google once and let it do the rest of the work than it is to discover an arbitrary page and manually follow an arbitrary chain of hyperlinks across an arbitrary set of other pages hoping they just happen to lead to what you want.
floren 1y ago
> I would never write a blog today (especially one that is self-hosted) because I know I would spend most of my time begging for scraps. If you really want a large enough audience that your creative efforts are worthwhile, you have to churn out content. Why assume you need to seek an audience at all? I have been periodically writing blog posts for about 15 years about whatever I feel like. I may only post a few times a year. I don't have comments turned on. I still enjoy going back periodically to see what I was up to in 2015, and occasionally I get a really nice email from someone who stumbled on a post they found worthwhile.
- ravenstine 1y ago
  To each their own. At that point, I'd rather just write to myself without publishing so that I can be 110% candid, which I already do by journaling.
  - derekzhouzhen 1y ago
    My blog is essentially my journal; no one else reads it. However, knowing someone else _might_ read it is making me spend the effort to write in better style, to watch my language, so I would not be embarrassed by myself. That's the value of blog over journal for me.
  - rhet0rica 1y ago
    It sounds like the presumption that you would do this for money is the problem here—you don't have to "beg for scraps" if it's just a hobby done for fun. ...which is probably the most succinct way of describing where our dear Old Net has gone: swallowed up by the razor-thin margins of the professional creative economy.

krapp 1y ago

I don't think that discovery without algorithms is possible, because the Web is essentially unstructured. Any means of discovery needs a way to organize all of that information, and then present it in a relevant way. People forget that Google was actually good at this. The problem isn't algorithms per se, but how those algorithms are implemented. Unfortunately, people coming up with alternatives tend to lean too far in the other direction - we have alternative search engines designed to exclude all sites using Javascript, for instance, which cater to people who don't want to interact with any part of the modern web, but we don't have an alternative that does what Google used to do before search became big business and simply attempt to catalog the entire web (including the parts that HN hates) and display relevant results to the end user.

carlosjobim 1y ago
How about hyperlinks?
- krapp 1y ago
  Hyperlinks alone don't work for discovery as a general problem, and on a smaller scale they just push the problem up a level because you still need to discover the hyperlink. The web is just too vast and complex and they don't contain necessary semantic information. This is why the "web portal" failed and gave way to search engines, which were objectively better for the task. You need another level of abstraction over the web to make discovery work, as you do with any application to make data useful. It's little different than making queries in a database.
  - carlosjobim 1y ago
    I find that hyperlinks work very well currently. You read something of interest on one page, and discover more information through hyperlinks to other pages. That also works great for books. Almost every book I read mentions other related books within the content, and from there you discover more and more.
    - krapp 1y ago
      Hyperlinks don't help for discovering that page to begin with, or related material not specifically being linked to from that page. Given that you're on Hacker News, it's likely your use case for the web isn't typical.
      - carlosjobim 1y ago
        Well how would you discover Google? Everybody starts somewhere
        krapp 1y ago
        It's much easier to discover Google once and let it do the rest of the work than it is to discover an arbitrary page and manually follow an arbitrary chain of hyperlinks across an arbitrary set of other pages hoping they just happen to lead to what you want.

floren 1y ago

> I would never write a blog today (especially one that is self-hosted) because I know I would spend most of my time begging for scraps. If you really want a large enough audience that your creative efforts are worthwhile, you have to churn out content. Why assume you need to seek an audience at all? I have been periodically writing blog posts for about 15 years about whatever I feel like. I may only post a few times a year. I don't have comments turned on. I still enjoy going back periodically to see what I was up to in 2015, and occasionally I get a really nice email from someone who stumbled on a post they found worthwhile.

ravenstine 1y ago
To each their own. At that point, I'd rather just write to myself without publishing so that I can be 110% candid, which I already do by journaling.
- derekzhouzhen 1y ago
  My blog is essentially my journal; no one else reads it. However, knowing someone else _might_ read it is making me spend the effort to write in better style, to watch my language, so I would not be embarrassed by myself. That's the value of blog over journal for me.
- rhet0rica 1y ago
  It sounds like the presumption that you would do this for money is the problem here—you don't have to "beg for scraps" if it's just a hobby done for fun. ...which is probably the most succinct way of describing where our dear Old Net has gone: swallowed up by the razor-thin margins of the professional creative economy.