[gopher] Joining in: I'm the maintainer/host of Gopher Proxy

[Evert Meulie]

On 13.09.2013 14:02, Bradley D. Thornton wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: RIPEMD160
>
>
>
> On 09/13/2013 01:33 AM, Kim Holviala wrote:
>> On Sep 12, 2013, at 16:18, Evert Meulie <evert at meulie.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> http://gopherproxy.org/ & http://gopherproxy.meulie.net/ allows Gopher content to be viewed in any web browser, by converting Gopher content into web pages as you request it.
>>>
>>> And yes, currently there is little/no means in place to keep bots & search engines out.
>>> I've been reading a bit what has been written here in other threads on this subject, and will chime in with my 2¢ soon.
>>
>> Personally I don't mind that Google and others crawl through my gopher resources, but I think quite a lot of people here object to that. I think the easiest way would be to just have a robots.txt to completely block all spidering.
>
> I'm one of those who object - not to gopher spiders indexing resources,
> but any access to my resources via http. If I wanted web browsers using
> hypertext transfer protocol browsing through my resources then I would
> put them on webservers - which I already do for other resources.
>
> This has come up before, and I was shot down by the community for
> considering the blocking of all proxy servers. Many people here felt
> that any form of indexing or access to gopher resources by any foreign
> protocol was better than not being indexed or accessed at all, and I
> disagree, at least where my resources are concerned, especially since I
> maintain unique content only available via gopher:// protocol.
>
> It's not for me to decide what others opinions are, but I for one am of
> the mind that if someone can surf gopher resources via http:// then
> there is no point in gopher:// at all.
>
> As far as robots.txt is concerned, my feeling is that this is a http
> standard, and not a gopher standard, so there should be some other way
> to limit indexing of gopher resources for those who choose to do so. I
> do not choose to block such indexing, and welcome it, just not via a
> means that is only going to lead to an URL in google that starts with an
> http:// instead of a gopher://
>
> If those come up as dead links because the protocol is not supported by
> some particular client then so be it. Perhaps Google could put a note
> saying that the browser needs to be capable of accessing gopher sites or
> that the user needs a plugin - I dunno, and don't much care.
>
> I can say this. There are several protocols as URIs which don't get
> indexed or returned as search strings because some, or many browsers do
> not yet, or no longer, support those protocols. Here's a list of some
> URIs where the protocols may or may not be supported depending upon
> whether certain software is installed on the client machine, or plugins
> have been installed, or support is inherent in some or most browsers:
>
> gopher://
> ftp://
> skype://
> http://
> https://
>
> Again, I'm not interested in ANYONE accessing any of my gopher resources
> via an http to gopher proxy. They can access those resources with a
> client that is gopher capable or not access them at all - this is the
> only way that gopher will have any relevance.
>
> I see no relevance in gopher protocol if it's just going to be accessed
> via hypertext transfer protocol anyway - therefore, I am now more
> inclined to consider blocking http to gopher proxy servers at this time
> than I ever have been.
>
> Going back to that thread now, here is the segue, in this particular
> posting, that I promised to be forthcoming a few moments ago...
>
>
>>
>> Anyway - great work - I really like the way gopherproxy.org works.
>
> Hey I think these are great services too, and applaud the effort and
> level of functionality - I just think it's wrong to let gopher fall
> further into obscurity because it can be relegated into insignificance
> by browswers (supposed to be multi-protocol clients) that do not have
> gopher support, and search engines that will not provide search results
> as gopher:// URIs.
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>> - Kim
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Gopher-Project mailing list
>> Gopher-Project at lists.alioth.debian.org
>> http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gopher-project
>
> - --
> Bradley D. Thornton
> Manager Network Services
> NorthTech Computer
> TEL: +1.310.388.9469  (US)
> TEL: +44.203.318.2755 (UK)
> TEL: +41.43.508.05.10 (CH)
> http://NorthTech.US
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
> Comment: Find this cert at x-hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net
>
> iQEcBAEBAwAGBQJSMv7KAAoJEE1wgkIhr9j3FmAH/0Xlvu6uaL9xjaiTg4d0C6Fg
> ICk4P8T6MI89hAdaNOxesGuIiQaCyMG4K/v20PNGpOH1V4okIe/dH4Cwm2T8i8tF
> Fhfs7QVFfCsRgcwzpwAK3rA68TYwAFSKaGoMGz28V9TkLjFBaqWB2SKlQdtxkspI
> 1PGadt9EdeCumGH09T1hbjd/629YJSzP81wckdeTQ828ddhkzjRBkbYNwLeldg12
> UFJtzkE6Uoyez63SlwHJjyjDAkM3PkL71qCNGLSBu9qkFw/pJ6BN2N0upeIhtSpJ
> im6CT3Fv4vfNSdBOxh2JSy0DGkXXpGs5R3tvyWAE209947B0S5llcBbE5YTcBDQ=
> =yYRZ
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>

Well, a simple solution for Bradley (and all others who aren't into 
gopher-http connectivity:

block connections from 46.182.107.117 going to 70/tcp and 
http://gopher.meulie.net/ / http://gopherproxy.meulie.net/ stays out of 
your Gopher server.

And absolutely no hard feelings from its maintainer, should you choose 
to do so!  :-)


Greetings,
    Evert Meulie