Volla really needs to hire/assign some staff for their support forum The large pile of unanswered questions there does not inspire confidence in their product.
In an age of LLMs, is it time to reconsider human-edited web directories?
Back in the early-to-mid '90s, one of the main ways of finding anything on the web was to browse through a web directory.
These directories generally had a list of categories on their front page. News/Sport/Entertainment/Arts/Technology/Fashion/etc.
Each of those categories had subcategories, and sub-subcategories that you clicked through until you got to a list of websites. These lists were maintained by actual humans.
Typically, these directories also had a limited web search that would crawl through the pages of websites listed in the directory.
Lycos, Excite, and of course Yahoo all offered web directories of this sort.
(EDIT: I initially also mentioned AltaVista. It did offer a web directory by the late '90s, but this was something it tacked on much later.)
By the late '90s, the standard narrative goes, the web got too big to index websites manually.
Google promised the world its algorithms would weed out the spam automatically.
And for a time, it worked.
But then SEO and SEM became a multi-billion-dollar industry. The spambots proliferated. Google itself began promoting its own content and advertisers above search results.
And now with LLMs, the industrial-scale spamming of the web is likely to grow exponentially.
My question is, if a lot of the web is turning to crap, do we even want to search the entire web anymore?
Do we really want to search every single website on the web?
Or just those that aren't filled with LLM-generated SEO spam?
Or just those that don't feature 200 tracking scripts, and passive-aggressive privacy warnings, and paywalls, and popovers, and newsletters, and increasingly obnoxious banner ads, and dark patterns to prevent you cancelling your "free trial" subscription?
At some point, does it become more desirable to go back to search engines that only crawl pages on human-curated lists of trustworthy, quality websites?
And is it time to begin considering what a modern version of those early web directories might look like?
Lycos, Excite, AltaVista, and of course Yahoo all were originally web directories of this sort.
Both Wikipedia and my own memory disagree with you about Lycos and AltaVista. I’m pretty sure they both started as search engines. Maybe they briefly dabbled in being “portals”.
Up to the 1990s there were workstations designed for software development (Lisp/Smalltalk Machines by various vendors), graphics and CAD (Apollo, SGI), and general purpose systems (Sun, HP)....
Magic Sword US tour July - August
Magic Sword...
Clan of Xymox (goth rock/darkwave) US Tour June 2024 (www.metropolis-records.com)
Eva X North Eastern US (and Toronto) mini-tour May 2024
Eva X...
Balvanera (darkwave/EBM from Argentina) US mini-tour May 11-18
Balvanera...
Kontravoid (darkwave) European tour (post-punk.com)
already underway
The Mission / Nuovo Testamento Western North America tour (post-punk.com)
The Mission is making some west-cost USA stops, with Nuovo Testamento. Then some Western Canada stops, without Nuovo Testamento.
Then Comes Silence (goth rock) North American tour (www.metropolis-records.com)
Volla Tablet is a Google-free Android tablet that also supports Ubuntu Touch (liliputing.com)
Vision Video (goth rock/goth-pop) North America tour
as found on www.songkick.com/artists/…/calendar...
Patriarchy (darkwave? from California) European tour (post-punk.com)
Patriarchy...
Lords Of Acid 2024 North America tour (www.metropolis-records.com)
Dancing Plague (darkwave) on tour (post-punk.com)
Just discovered. Tour is already underway....
Choke Chain & Trace Amount (dark/harsh industrial) tour
chokechain.bandcamp.comtraceamountnyc.bandcamp.com...
Master Boot Record tour (mbrserver.com)
cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/13966888...
She Past Away touring (shepastaway.org)
Combichrist 2024 tour (www.metropolis-records.com)
Just discovered – already underway....
Johnny Dynamite & The Bloodsuckers tour
Not very familiar with this band, but sounds interesting...
CD Ghost tour (www.songkick.com)
CD Ghost...
VNV Nation USA tour (vnvnation.com)
coming to a city near me.
Ultrasunn tour - North America and Europe (www.ultrasunn.com)
09 Mar La Poche Béthune, France...
Black Rose Burning Eastern USA tour
Found this. Coming to a city near me. Supposedly other shows will be added. I’m probably going....
Riki tour (groundcontroltouring.com)
(I’m not a promoter) This is coming to a city near me. Will probably be there....
Office workstations
Up to the 1990s there were workstations designed for software development (Lisp/Smalltalk Machines by various vendors), graphics and CAD (Apollo, SGI), and general purpose systems (Sun, HP)....