# I am the Watcher. I am your guide through this vast new twtiverse.
#
# Usage:
# https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/users View list of users and latest twt date.
# https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/twt View all twts.
# https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/mentions?uri=:uri View all mentions for uri.
# https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/conv/:hash View all twts for a conversation subject.
#
# Options:
# uri Filter to show a specific users twts.
# offset Start index for quey.
# limit Count of items to return (going back in time).
#
# twt range = 1 6
# self = https://watcher.sour.is/conv/rm4wp7q
Confession:
I’ve never found microblogging like twtxt or the Fediverse or any other “modern” social media to be truly fulfilling/satisfying.
The reason is that it is focused so much on *people*. You follow this or that person, everybody spends time making a nice profile page, the posts are all very “ego-centric”. Seriously, it feels like everybody is on an ego-trip all the time (this is much worse on the Fediverse, not so much here on twtxt).
I miss the days of *topic-based* forums/groups. A Linux forum here, a forum about programming there, another one about a certain game. Stuff like that. That was really great – and it didn’t even suffer from the need to federate.
Sadly, most of these forums are dead now. Especially the nerds spend a lot of time on the Fediverse now and have abandoned forums almost completely.
On Mastodon, you can follow hashtags, which somewhat emulates a topic-based experience. But it’s not that great and the protocol isn’t meant to be used that way (just read the snac2 docs on this issue). And the concept of “likes” has eliminated lots of the actual user interaction. ☹️
@movq this is so real... i think we need to bring back topic focused groups but like with a little off topic side of things just in case people wanna go off topic. so the option's there but the intent is the topic! microblogging isn't best for this yeah. i think this is part of why IRC still goes strong for many tech people
@movq this is so real... i think we need to bring back topic focused groups but like with a little off topic side of things just in case people wanna go off topic. so the option's there but the intent is the topic! microblogging isn't best for this yeah. i think this is part of why IRC still goes strong for many tech people
@movq "*topic-based forums/groups*", you mean what USENET used to be, and the "niche" that Reddit is fulfilling these days? :-D I get it, I agree. I think I find twtxt more fulfilling than anything else because of its small size. I feel like I truly know everyone (even if that might not be true), and find myself "at home". The bigger the place, the shyest I become, the less enticing it is.*
@kat Off-topic areas are always a good idea. :-) Web forums often had those. And web forums are actually what I had in mind, @bender. 😅 (While I do have a certain nostalgia for it *now*, Usenet has always been a bit weird to me. Can’t really explain why.)
@movq @kat @quark In 2014 one person created protocol ii. Later it forked in IDEC. Why i said this? Because it's simple "federated" forum-like protocol where from your station fetch another every 5-10 minutes. Stations has topic-based channels like idec.talks, linux.16, haiku.os, zx.spectrum. In short it's FIDO but.. more modern? Documentation: https://github.com/idec-net/new-docs (mostly Russian, but you can use translator, also protocol already translated to english)