Explaining Myself.
Web Publishing Has to Stay a Thing
07/26/2025
Desktop web publishing should continue to be a thing. But it can't just be the publishers making it one. It has to be web visitors too. And to make them we have to curate among those left who still remember what "web surfing" in the day, was.
There has to be an appeal among those who still use desktop and laptop PCs or any device where one can comfortably surf, to change how they think about the open web and how they visit websites. How do you get people to deliberately web surf in a world where they are now expected to "go to" not "hop to" digital places, much of which by the way exists in the form of apps.
Blog and link rolls would be one way, but since it would be easy to pollute any centralized web directory with spam and dangerous links, it would have to be extraordinarily well managed in order to be trusted.
Personally curated blog lists are out there though and are intimate to each curator, something the desktop web should be. I almost forgot about my own, but too, Suzy McHale's, or Ryan Barrett's, each of which I offer up as simple examples. The individuals behind these are not professional click-gatherers, they are authentic and use the web to reflect themselves, as the initial publishing homesteaders of the 90s did.
If there were just enough of "us" - me and the rando who still randomly landed here or jumped from their dwindling personal list of active personal blogs and what not - proving all of this was still a thing, the concept might catch a big second wave.
By Dave for Personal Blog.
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Branding the Non-Commercial Web
08/16/2024
I posted the following in reply to a Threads post last week and kind of like it.
So here it is again at my blog with maybe more context.
What is needed is to brand a non-commercial web and then get people to participate in that brand. Right now everyone has their own idea of it so there is no organized movement that everyone can relate to, to foster one. My website (in profile) is no-commercial and very much what you mean. But for it to be a thing, it needs to interlink with another website like it, and so on, and so on, and so on.
As noted this blab is in response to someone who misses the old somewhat ad-free internet and web of the early days, and is my thought on at least a partial solution. The closest thing we have right now is the IndieWeb movement.
The IndieWeb gets everything right insofar as a rationale goes, but doesn't seem to touch on people's desire for reach, which is a thing that social media and commercial platforms do so well with. Also, I suspiciously note that the movement does not preclude monetizing anywhere that I can see; it just focuses on publishing logistics and data liberty. If there's no loud stand against monetization, who's to say that a web of independent publishers don't wind up enshitifying?
People need to collectively agree on what the non-commercial web is, why it makes sense for a body of information sharing, and then participate in propagating examples of it. Once that happens, reach will be restored.
By Dave for Personal Blog.
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