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

[Kyle Hooks]

I think we might be better off seeing if we can contribute GOPHER
protocol compatibility code to the Firefox codebase, or try to
convince them to ship it with a plug-in preinstalled.

-----Original Message-----
From: Bradley D. Thornton [mailto:Bradley at NorthTech.US] 
Sent: Friday, September 13, 2013 8:02 AM
To: Gopher Project Discussion
Subject: Re: [gopher] Joining in: I'm the maintainer/host of
Gopher Proxy

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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-pr
oject

- --
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

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