Gopher or Gemini?

I'm not sure which of the two to use in the long term.

Web Wiki

I've had a Dokuwiki site for my own use - keeping notes etc. of

projects for about 3 years now and it's been fun to slowly add

information there, and I regularly find myself going back to find

something, to jog my memory.

I really like the "smolWeb" idea, and limiting my time on the

increasingly annoying Web, and am considering using one of the

protocols (Gemini or Gopher) as a place to replace my Wiki.

What to use?

Gopher has an attraction due to the simple nature and history of

it.

Gemini has an attraction due to the minimal, but useful,

style/markdown that can be used to make reading of documents a

little easier - for notes on computer stuff it's really handy to be

able to have

code blocks in unformatted test

I'm wary of trying to keep both things updated with the same

contents. And trying to avoid the temptation to also duplicate

everything on the Wiki site too...

Gopher is "mature" and has quite a wide following

Gemini is "new" and actively being developed, and might attract

more people due to it's newness.

I'm wary at signs I've seen of people trying to add things like

scripting to Gemini pages... and I wonder if I really want to spend

lots of time getting to grips with the finer points of the protocol

that go beyond basic document publishing and basic file sharing.

Gopher does most of what I want, and isn't going to grow in

functionality any time soon (which is a good thing).

I like the markdown (gemtext) in Gemini, with easy linking from

pages that isn't possible in Gopher, although Gopher /can/ have links

if you make each "page" as if it's a "gophermap" - and I've seen it done a

few times. That is about as far as it's possible to /bend/ Gopher,

I think. And it's probably far enoough.

What to do?

Gopher has more of an emotional attraction and Gemini has a few

prectical advantages - but are they enough?

I think I'll try to do both for a while and decide later. I know

people do both, and have scripts to publish posts to both. The risk

here is that the less restrictive formatting of Gemini (long lines,

markup elements) will start to remove some of the stark, simple

clean distinctiveness of Gopher if Gemtext posts are just dropped

un-modified into Gopherholes as phlog posts.

I need to spend more time wandering around both spaces, using

different client applications, to decide which I think would be

most appropriate for what I want to achieve.

Knowing what it is I want to achieve would be a start....

-- g4slv 2025-07-10