I will stay on the small web

Author:       -fab- 
License:      CC BY-SA 4.0
Published on: Thu, 17 Jul 2025 02:23:24 +0200
Last updated: Thu, 17 Jul 2025 02:23:24 +0200

Lately I've read through the whole thread on BBS from clseibold and also the articles by jsreed5 and the not so new anymore "newcomer" sbr.

After reading about half of the thread on BBS i got a little depressed, but that's maybe because of the dose of reality. I feel the stagnation and maybe decline of the Gemini Space too, and yes maybe it had it's peak in 2021, when I found about Gemini too. But I was so fascinated and intrigued by it that I short after my discovery set up a Capsule.

And it was fun! And for me it still is! To read about other peoples lives, their gadgets, the building of interactive sites and all the interesting stuff. I believe round that time Station and BBS came along and serve since then as central meeting and discussion sites. There still was the "official Gemini Mailing List" which is now long gone. Now BBS could serve its purpose. And there also is a #gemini IRC channel on tildechat.

But I feel the decline :( and it's very sad to see long active and important people leave. Now most people come and go. I don't know why so few people stay, especially the more technical interested.

And I understand clseibold, who did a lot of cool things with gemini but the people seem to play around with it for a while and then leave it behind. I have to admit I've never really looked into his stuff, too. But just while writing this article I set "aurasearch" as my standard search engine, because it also gives me Gemipedia articles for my search (among other things), which is very useful. But other projects seem to be treated like child toys, used once and then never again. That's frustrating.

I also develop some things (eg. go-gemini-mention and go-gopherproxy) but they're only used by myself although I publish them on my Codeberg.org account. And I have a lot of fun in doing these little projects and I hope that the Gemini people don't stop to develop their own tools and publish them at least for others to learn about them.

But I think most Gemini Capsuleers and surfers are just like me and mostly write to their gemlog and read other people's content. And I think thats fine. And that gemini is a niche protocol is easy to understand. But all these abandoned Capsules make me sad. I always thought of myself of not sticking to do something. That's why I never had a blog or something in the commercial web. And I thought that this is not really the norm although it seems when people get in contact with gemini *it's* the norm.

Maybe it's because Gemini is so low on stimuli, and people don't realize that this is intentional. You have to put your nose deeper into the topic to get something out of it. So even if I take breaks from time to time, I *will* stick with gemini, even if I hope the community grows and gets more long term involved participants.

And a last word to clseibold: Take a break, try to get not too frustrated and please, *please* don't give up.

All in all - Have fun!

-fab-

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