> And part of that restricted spec would allow linking only to such links, to stay within the network ?
Doesn't work over time. You link somewhere, the other site owner a month later decides they want to use Google Analytics, now you're linking your readers back to the web they're trying to avoid.
> And the biggest challenge with Gemini is creating a great search engine.
Not really, it's discovery in general, which can be solved in many ways that don't involve search engines; Wikipedia's references are often a good discovery tool, for example. I use aggregators to find Gemini content and follow discussions which are happening across the space.
> You link somewhere, the other site owner a month later decides they want to use Google Analytics, now you're linking your readers back to the web they're trying to avoid.
What if instead of a direct link, there was an intermediary that verified that the source and target of the link conformed to spec? If either side didn't conform, the link would just not work. Ideally the intermediary would be built in to the source's web server for privacy reasons. If the target site decided to quit and break spec, people could still access the site from links posted outside of the network.
Yeah, so what you really need is a browser that only supports your subset. It’ll ensure that whatever sites you view are fast/safe/whatever, but Gemini sites you make will be equally accessible to users of “legacy” browsers.
Except that then 99% of people reading your page will be using Firefox, so it's not that big of a deal to just say fuck it and not do this whole SafeHTML thing any more when you want that one extra feature in a year. The 1% of readers who cared are just a minority.
The entire purpose here is to build a community of people who care about this sort of thing, who write content for that community, where taking your content away from that community is not an easy decision of adding a <script> or <style> tag.
Missing 99% of your potential readers is a big problem, though.
Maybe there's another way?
For example, Gemini could only link through a centralized link management server, and that link server will verify links to be "clean" , and if a link isn't clean it will become dead ?
Of course, that depends whether said link gets most of his traffic from within Gemini or outside.
I spend most of my time in small spaces - 100 people, max, of who about 10 might be around at any given time. I'm not worried that people are going to miss what I have to say, because I'm talking to the people who are there. The people who aren't might as well be irrelevant.
Have you ever spent any time in small communities? It's lovely to just... not have to care about gaining followers or making arbitrary counters go up or whatever it is people do, and just talk/create for the sake of it. There's no "brand" to care about.
Counterpoint: All these brain structures that make us crave power and influence evolved in a time in which humans exclusively dealt with small communities (going by your "100 people max" criterion).
Many users also expect javascript-heavy experiences, that they'll be tracked across the web, and that every resource they're likely to access on the internet is commercial in nature. Gemini is quite explicitly a project to try different things.
Doesn't work over time. You link somewhere, the other site owner a month later decides they want to use Google Analytics, now you're linking your readers back to the web they're trying to avoid.
> And the biggest challenge with Gemini is creating a great search engine.
Not really, it's discovery in general, which can be solved in many ways that don't involve search engines; Wikipedia's references are often a good discovery tool, for example. I use aggregators to find Gemini content and follow discussions which are happening across the space.