The problem with https://ooh.directory/ is that nobody can tell what gets added and what doesn't. Submissions go through an opaque review process and a lot of good submissions don't make it.
Just try searching your favorite bloggers in ooh.directory. 9 out of 10 times they'll be missing from the directory.
I'd prefer a more transparent directory where we can can tell why something is or isn't added.
Hi, it’s my site. I’m sorry you don’t feel this hobby site run by one person doesn’t have a sufficiently transparent process. The process is: I add blogs that are interesting, recently-updated, etc, when I have time. And there’s only so much of that in life.
Another problem is that I like to add a variety of sites so that people following what’s recently added don’t get swamped by loads of blogs on one topic. And last time the site got on HN the suggestions (not “submissions”) were swamped with mostly men with rarely-updated blogs about computers. I’m expecting more now :)
I also enjoy searching for blogs that I find interesting and adding those, rather than relying solely on the suggestions. Honestly, I’ve been thinking of removing the suggestions form entirely, because it results in exactly this level of expectation and uncertainty about what gets “approved”.
And, yes, of course lots of blogs are missing! Look how many blogs are in there and try to guess how many blogs there might still be out there!
Plenty of blog aggravators with transparent curation processes exist, and are terrible. No need to make this one like the other others that are worse than it.
What about transparent curation process makes them terrible? And what about an opaque process makes it better? I'm not seeing the connection but I'd like to understand.
Sometimes I think about making public a utility or data set that I've curated for my own use. I don't necessarily intend to continue it or support it but I think, maybe some people would find it useful in its current state. And then I think about getting these comments all the time and it seems not worthwhile.
And then what? You're looking at a list of hundreds of submissions and why they have been added or not added, which completely defeats the purpose of that website.
I don't get the point of these sites, because it I want a curated list, I visit the front page of hackernews or reddit -- and trust the system.
Ohh.directory I'd the same thing, except for a different selection process.
don't see why it has to be this way. It doesn't take much to tell us what the review process is like and what gets added and what does not. If I know in advance that the blogs I submit are outside their scope, then I won't waste time submitting them.
I also don't see why there can't be an open directory of websites where the community makes decisions about what to add instead of leaving it to a single individual.
Syndic8, DMOZ, NewsIsFree, and TX (lost to history?) used the same taxonomy approach seen on ooh.directory. All are defunct now, but DMOZ appears to live on as curlie.
Technically, we could tag our RSS feeds with the taxonomy defined by ooh.dir, which would allow us to automatically sort blogs into topic groups, but I haven't found a single feed that uses the approach. We end up with ad-hoc category labels that are challenging to deduplicate, or more often, uncategorized blogs.
Taxonomy labels are often deduplicated on Wikidata, the unofficial "hub" of the modern Semantic Web. There's already a defined property for matching DMOZ/Curlie labels, and others could be added if relevant.
Given how worried everyone is about the AI slopocalypse where the internet is drowned in LLM-generated junk content maybe it's time for a resurgence of human curated directories like this one.
I'm part of one and I don't think it really promotes discoverability. What could work would be some kind of search engine restricted to said webring to make a button to list similar articles. At least I would click on such a button!
I joined a web ring last year, but I'm uncertain about it. Modern web rings tend to automate updates to the next/prev buttons, so I'm never sure what I'm linking to. The web ring owner acts as curator, but I don't know how much effort they put in to keep slop or other undesirable content out.
I'd like to argue that Wikipedia also tries to be comprehensive within the limits of relevant topics. And overall, Wikipedia still seems to be going strong.
From what I have seen over the years, the problem with such aggregation sites has been that the maintainer eventually loses interest or does not renew the domain etc.
The only way to maintain long term interest in such sites would be to have it as a github site/or a long term commitment, community contributions with some kind of community filtering/voting to maintain the quality of submissions.
Finding niche, personal blogs has become so difficult lately because search results are dominated by massive corporate sites and SEO-optimized junk. This is a great way to actually discover the 'small web' again. It reminds me why I started following RSS feeds in the first place.
You may be interested in a browser extension I launched at the end of last year. It keeps track of RSS feeds as you browse, helping you stay connected to the small web sites you discover.
“Kagi Search is an ad-free search engine that will actively down-rank sites with lots of ads and trackers in the results and promote sites with little or no advertising”
Some suggestions: I know none of us like "the algorithms choosing", but I think we can do better than alphabetical order. Number of clicks you see (popularity), or number of inbound links google tells you about would be good.
I also think you've gone to great effort, but it's still very light in some categories. I hope you keep going - what's your data source? Are you tracking outbound links from the ones you have indexed to find new blogs?
the google is dying narrative usually misses the fact that the incentive loop for niche blogs is just broken right now. we're caught between writing for the 'helpful content' algorithm or writing for actual humans. curated directories like this are basically the only way to bypass the seo arms race and find real domain expertise again.
I'm not sure where they are at this moment, but a while back Google seemed to abandon EEAT and SEOed pages in favor of pure domain authority. So it no longer mattered if you page had the all-important "Key Takeaways".
Blogs are still discoverable via aggregators and link sharing. But those are ephemeral, directories like this and search engines like marginalia are important resources.
>> No blogs or categories were found matching emacs.
> OK then.
Exactly. This is a deeper problem with ooh.directory, that the review process is opaque. They do not explain why something is added or rejected. I do not care much about Emacs itself but I submitted several of my favourite bloggers who write about retrogames, gaming rigs, and custom keyboards. None of them were added. None at all.
I do not think we should be encouraging closed directories like this in the community. I would much rather see a transparent directory where the review process is clear.
I've been building a list of blog lists, and I know of 136 feeds that use that category tag. (Open filters, select emacs under category, adjust language as needed).
I've submitted entries but they never get added. I have no idea how they decide what makes it into the directory and what doesn't so I've stopped trying.
The problem with https://ooh.directory/ is that nobody can tell what gets added and what doesn't. Submissions go through an opaque review process and a lot of good submissions don't make it.
Just try searching your favorite bloggers in ooh.directory. 9 out of 10 times they'll be missing from the directory.
I'd prefer a more transparent directory where we can can tell why something is or isn't added.
Hi, it’s my site. I’m sorry you don’t feel this hobby site run by one person doesn’t have a sufficiently transparent process. The process is: I add blogs that are interesting, recently-updated, etc, when I have time. And there’s only so much of that in life.
Another problem is that I like to add a variety of sites so that people following what’s recently added don’t get swamped by loads of blogs on one topic. And last time the site got on HN the suggestions (not “submissions”) were swamped with mostly men with rarely-updated blogs about computers. I’m expecting more now :)
I also enjoy searching for blogs that I find interesting and adding those, rather than relying solely on the suggestions. Honestly, I’ve been thinking of removing the suggestions form entirely, because it results in exactly this level of expectation and uncertainty about what gets “approved”.
And, yes, of course lots of blogs are missing! Look how many blogs are in there and try to guess how many blogs there might still be out there!
I’ve always enjoyed your curation, especially in the music department. Thanks so much!
FTW!!!
Plenty of blog aggravators with transparent curation processes exist, and are terrible. No need to make this one like the other others that are worse than it.
What about transparent curation process makes them terrible? And what about an opaque process makes it better? I'm not seeing the connection but I'd like to understand.
Sometimes I think about making public a utility or data set that I've curated for my own use. I don't necessarily intend to continue it or support it but I think, maybe some people would find it useful in its current state. And then I think about getting these comments all the time and it seems not worthwhile.
An RSS feed of changes would help.
There should be a feed of “Recently added blogs” linked right on the home page!
Oh, hang on, what’s that I see on the home page?
> Submissions go through an opaque review process and a lot of good submissions don't make it.
That's no different than the old DMOZ.
> That's no different than the old DMOZ.
Agree. This is no different from DMOZ. I'm asking here if there's something better, or if someone can make something better.
And then what? You're looking at a list of hundreds of submissions and why they have been added or not added, which completely defeats the purpose of that website.
I don't get the point of these sites, because it I want a curated list, I visit the front page of hackernews or reddit -- and trust the system.
Ohh.directory I'd the same thing, except for a different selection process.
You either trust it or you don't.
> You either trust it or you don't.
don't see why it has to be this way. It doesn't take much to tell us what the review process is like and what gets added and what does not. If I know in advance that the blogs I submit are outside their scope, then I won't waste time submitting them.
I also don't see why there can't be an open directory of websites where the community makes decisions about what to add instead of leaving it to a single individual.
I was looking at the RSS spec a while back to figure out how the category field was supposed to work and ended up digging up web directory history.
https://alexsci.com/blog/rss-categories/
Syndic8, DMOZ, NewsIsFree, and TX (lost to history?) used the same taxonomy approach seen on ooh.directory. All are defunct now, but DMOZ appears to live on as curlie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_directories
Technically, we could tag our RSS feeds with the taxonomy defined by ooh.dir, which would allow us to automatically sort blogs into topic groups, but I haven't found a single feed that uses the approach. We end up with ad-hoc category labels that are challenging to deduplicate, or more often, uncategorized blogs.
Taxonomy labels are often deduplicated on Wikidata, the unofficial "hub" of the modern Semantic Web. There's already a defined property for matching DMOZ/Curlie labels, and others could be added if relevant.
Given how worried everyone is about the AI slopocalypse where the internet is drowned in LLM-generated junk content maybe it's time for a resurgence of human curated directories like this one.
I also maintain a human-curated directory (and search engine) of personal blogs at https://minifeed.net
You can submit a blog here: https://minifeed.net/suggest
Criteria is pretty simple:
- Must be written by a human.
- Must be in English (for now).
- Must have a valid RSS feed.
- Must not be purely a "micro-blog", i.e. must have some content other than tweet-sized status updates or links.
Let's bring back the webring.
The no ai webring is full of really unique stuff. There’s definitively people out there still doing webrings. Now we need a metawebring.
https://baccyflap.com/noai/
Slop sucks and all, but those abandoned "let's make pages look like geocities" sites are pretty tiresome.
I'm part of one and I don't think it really promotes discoverability. What could work would be some kind of search engine restricted to said webring to make a button to list similar articles. At least I would click on such a button!
I joined a web ring last year, but I'm uncertain about it. Modern web rings tend to automate updates to the next/prev buttons, so I'm never sure what I'm linking to. The web ring owner acts as curator, but I don't know how much effort they put in to keep slop or other undesirable content out.
Hear! Hear!
It was tried before (e.g. Dmoz) and it does not work after it becomes popular.
I'm thinking more like just taking all the text files from 80-90s and making a separate static, frozen in time internet.
Dmoz was trying to replicate the Yahoo! style of directory, which requires being comprehensive.
Today we don't need comprehensive, we need maximum signal and minimum noise.
I'd like to argue that Wikipedia also tries to be comprehensive within the limits of relevant topics. And overall, Wikipedia still seems to be going strong.
If you're not trying to be comprehensive it's not a real directory, it's just an ordinary "awesome-list".
I am a fan of https://blogs.hn/. It is mostly HN-like content, but I visit it daily. I wish there was a "new" view though.
From what I have seen over the years, the problem with such aggregation sites has been that the maintainer eventually loses interest or does not renew the domain etc.
The only way to maintain long term interest in such sites would be to have it as a github site/or a long term commitment, community contributions with some kind of community filtering/voting to maintain the quality of submissions.
Finding niche, personal blogs has become so difficult lately because search results are dominated by massive corporate sites and SEO-optimized junk. This is a great way to actually discover the 'small web' again. It reminds me why I started following RSS feeds in the first place.
You may be interested in a browser extension I launched at the end of last year. It keeps track of RSS feeds as you browse, helping you stay connected to the small web sites you discover.
https://github.com/robalexdev/blog-quest
My buddy and I are building an index with a category interface like this one (and indieseek.xyz).
We index anything we consider authentic and contentful, but our category interface (mostly) consists of small web pages. Happy to hear any feedback.
Link: https://outerweb.org/explore-sorted
Strange, I looked around and couldn’t find a single contentful or authentic site in your index, rather the opposite.
Agreed. I also like the small web lens in kagi. Helps me to search through and find interesting stuff to read and follow.
+1 for Kari. You’ll find smaller, less SEO’d sites favored in their search results.
From https://help.kagi.com/kagi/why-kagi/noads.html:
“Kagi Search is an ad-free search engine that will actively down-rank sites with lots of ads and trackers in the results and promote sites with little or no advertising”
A good idea, and one I had myself recently.
Some suggestions: I know none of us like "the algorithms choosing", but I think we can do better than alphabetical order. Number of clicks you see (popularity), or number of inbound links google tells you about would be good.
I also think you've gone to great effort, but it's still very light in some categories. I hope you keep going - what's your data source? Are you tracking outbound links from the ones you have indexed to find new blogs?
the google is dying narrative usually misses the fact that the incentive loop for niche blogs is just broken right now. we're caught between writing for the 'helpful content' algorithm or writing for actual humans. curated directories like this are basically the only way to bypass the seo arms race and find real domain expertise again.
I'm not sure where they are at this moment, but a while back Google seemed to abandon EEAT and SEOed pages in favor of pure domain authority. So it no longer mattered if you page had the all-important "Key Takeaways".
Blogs are still discoverable via aggregators and link sharing. But those are ephemeral, directories like this and search engines like marginalia are important resources.
I'm subscribed to the Index Issue (i think that's the name) which has a nice short list of curated blogposts. Works for me!
Granted, I'd love a more technical version. Perhaps anyone here could start one?
Make an RSS list, pick the ones out you liked and BAM, you got my sub :)
> No blogs or categories were found matching emacs.
OK then.
lol
Even after the site being on HN last time, and getting hundreds and hundreds of tech blog suggestions as a result, none of them were about emacs.
What are your favourite emacs blogs?
>> No blogs or categories were found matching emacs.
> OK then.
Exactly. This is a deeper problem with ooh.directory, that the review process is opaque. They do not explain why something is added or rejected. I do not care much about Emacs itself but I submitted several of my favourite bloggers who write about retrogames, gaming rigs, and custom keyboards. None of them were added. None at all.
I do not think we should be encouraging closed directories like this in the community. I would much rather see a transparent directory where the review process is clear.
You do seem particularly offended or annoyed that some blogs you suggested have not yet appeared on the site.
You can read the FAQ article to see the criteria for what’s accepted, and also reasons why suggested blogs haven’t yet appeared.
Ultimately it’s my own hobby site and so I decide what is “good” or “interesting” - so long as it meets the other criteria.
There's an RSS planet that curates blogs about emacs, for anyone who is looking.
https://planet.emacslife.com/
I've been building a list of blog lists, and I know of 136 feeds that use that category tag. (Open filters, select emacs under category, adjust language as needed).
https://alexsci.com/rss-blogroll-network/discover/
Vim wins again
You can be the first! (I'd be interested!)
I've submitted entries but they never get added. I have no idea how they decide what makes it into the directory and what doesn't so I've stopped trying.
This is great. Some good nostalgia vibes.
The fact that it’s not exhaustive and is a reflection of the creator’s taste is a feature, not a bug.
the internet got just a little bit more human again.
https://minifeed.net is another similar site that I’ve enjoyed.