@koyu

Coming up on my second anniversary with Gemini soon. Vger's come a long way from an experimental space to full community services and I rarely even bother to scan the ML very often, except to catch up on the introduction of new innovations, of which there are more and more each week!

I don't think that we need to do anything further to, "...make #gemini attractive to the average person." Considering most of it's growth and adoption have occurred organically, simple plugs here and there or links (gemini://lin.ks) to content w/o explanation are pretty much all any advocates, such as ourselves should really need in order to whet the appetite of folks - "uh.... what's that? It's a link. What is Gemini? I'mma google that and see what all this excitement is all about".

Curiosity, IMO, has done more for folks to embrace this young technology and protocol than any amount of ground pounding or pontification could achieve, I think, but there are some considerations that we can lean upon as ambassadors of good will for Gemini that might be counterintuitive for many of us:

1.) I like #Elpher, and no, I'm a Vim person, but it's my goto Gemini (and Gopher) browser, because it handles gopher:// and gemini:// equally well, especially with respect to dumping raw page text and refreshes, it's just easy from an analysts point of view. But this is beyond what one can reasonably expect for the target audience to have their interest piqued where Gemini is concerned.

Many folks in the actual community prefer cli clients or slightly more souped up solutions like #Bombadillo that frankly, would leave, as you put it, "...the average person" disinterested. On my part, that includes Elpher (Yeah, "the average person" is a #wYNd0z3 user - try getting them to install #Emacs on a win10 machine and then explain Melpa to them.... you'll get that fisheye glaze every time).

So clients like #LaGrange (https://github.com/skyjake/lagrange/releases/v1.4.2) are exceedingly important to the sphere of adoption in Gemini space - the "average user" has been almost continually, categorically dismissed IMO, as someone that this new protocol is for, but it's not, when you look at most of the client software available that many of us use - yet it is actually specifically for them in more ways than it is for us that have been running Gemini servers since the very beginning - a chance for them to take a break from the overwhelmingly frustrating anxiousness they are entreated to when participating in the world of silo's - i.e., Faceplant, InstaSPAM, Twatter, etc.

Lagrange, and a couple of others, affords these average users the ability to just click, download, doubleclick, then click next/next/next, and Voila, a beautiful experience in their familiar browser-esque experience is presented.

2.) Having been a longtime member of the Gopher world, runnning gopher services almost continually since one of the few places you could find it was in a public library replacing physical card catalogs, a lot of my colleagues there express openly, some not unjustified level of enmity towards Gemini, and although this is understandably so, I feel it is unwarranted and due mostly to misconceptions, or perhaps even because no one has ever really reached out to the Gopher community with actual invitations or suggestions from that elder and more mature community of us.

Indeed, many of us, and initially most of us, actually did rally around what was for me at least, a more contemporary (and dare I say familiar?) syntax for authoring content and inserting links in pages, delving into the project at an early stage. Some I think, are a bit wary that regardless of #Solderpunk's declaration that Gemini, "...will not replace either", is arguably an ominous caveat that it may actually erode some of the relevance that at least Gopher has enjoyed during its resurgence in popularity during the last decade.

Not just that, but also that Gemini exited the gate with the specification that it would use TLS by default - something that we in the #Gopher community had bantered about over the years with proposals followed by repeated tabling of such initiatives. Yet now, #TLS is well supported (depending upon your server daemon of choice) by Gopher as too, seamlessly, transparently for those who choose to implement it, and also depending upon your choice of client as a user.

Outreach to the Gopher community, and embracing this lineage that Gemini has with Gopher, is important, and while on the surface it may not appear as if this is essential to adoption of Gemini by "the average user", I believe it is, because the "average user should be aware that with many clients such as #Lagrange and Elpher, among others, they essentially share the same similar support in the name space as relevant and viable services which "the average user" can visit - perhaps not even aware that clicking on a couple of links has brought them from Gopher space to Gemini space and back again.

I'll leave that point to be pondered, and move along...

3.) We can make Gemini attractive to "#the_average_user" by encouraging the developers of Gopher clients to include support for Gemini in their most excellent and existing products. Gopher clients like:

* #Dooble: https://github.com/textbrowser/dooble/releases/tag/2021.02.20 - a native Gopher enabled browser which is also a good HTML browser in its own right.

* #Gopher_Browser_for_Windows: http://www.mattowen.co.uk/gopher/gopher-client-browser-for-windows

* #Simple_Gopher_Client: Available in the Windows Store

* #Pocket_Gopher (Android): Available at F-Droid (https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.gmail.afonsotrepa.pocketgopher/) and similarly, encouraging support for Gopher in Android Gemini clients such as #Ariane (https://f-droid.org/en/packages/oppen.gemini.ariane/)

And several other great Gopher clients.

4.) We can make Gemini attractive to "the average user" by encouraging *some* authors of #Gemini clients to include support for inline images - this will prove to be, without a doubt, a **dealbreaker** for many folks - these "average users" want, and indeed *expect* to see at least simple .jpg and .png pics while surfing, without requiring the use and understanding of how to launch external apps that, of course, are better suited to handle such tasks. Launching a .pdf viewer is one thing, but they really expect to be able to see inline images (and nothing in the spec even discourages that with respect to Gemini clients).

5.) Now this is controversial, and I do understand it is my own contention, one which I've advocated for on the Gopher list for well over a decade now, but...

Block HTML to Gemini proxy services (even though robots.txt is clearly defined in the spec, I'm not aware of ANY proxy services that respect it - I've checked) - if you want people to populate a space, make them participate in that space, instead of looking into the fishbowl from the convenience of Google Chrome! nuff said there - you make up your own mind how you feel about allowing a proxy, but I block them, categorically. You want Gopher and Gemini content and software that can only be found on my servers, then you need to use an actual client that can natively surf that portion of the name space.

To further incentivize the adoption of clients that natively access Gemini name space, make sure to publish unique content - duplicating what one has already published, or will soon publish on some arbitrary #WordPress site defeats the purpose of even expecting that "the average user" should do anything different than they already are.

7.) Nothing.... nothing at all. Don't do anything else, except talk about how kewl
it is for you and your friends and colleagues; just letting the curiosity of those who keep hearing how totally bitchen Gemini is do all the work until they say, "man, I gotta check this foshizzles out coz everybody's doin' it."

That's how #Myspace did it, that's now #Faceplant did it, that's how #SnapTrap and #TicTac did it, and that's how #InstaSPAM did it - It's the, "All my friends are there" factor of gaining #critical_mass.

8.) Use Gemini yourself - the proverbial, plural youze :)

9.) This one's a bit controversial too: [Continue to] Post links (without explanation) to content you've published in Gemini space on popular social media platforms in the privacy disrespecting, closed source, monolithic silos where the multitudes of captive users are currently engaged in the self-deprecating acts of the abdication of their freedoms.

10.) Disregarding the relevance of registering #port_1965 with #IANA or seeking fame by authoring an #RFC (and most certainly, at least for the next year or two) - those are almost completely irrelevant issues in this day and age when critical mass is everything, and mere folly for the sake of one's own vanity (at least, for the current time being). I left that as the last point because it encourages not the act of doing something to further the aims of the mass adoption of Gemini as a relevant and utilized computing platform, but rather, NOT doing something to avoid the disruption of what can only be stated as the unexpected and overwhelming embrace by a growing community of early adopters.

And already, that's how Gemini is achieving that already enjoyed level of rapid adoption :)

Yeah, just let nature takes its course, so to speak.

I hope that helps!



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#tallship #Vger #1965 #fdroid
Ed_White_First_American_Spacewa…