philgyford

That's the kind of visitor I was talking about.

I wouldn't intentionally add a site that is entirely paywalled, so let me know if you come across one!

The value is that it's slightly easier to browse an alphabetical list than a random one (no, I don't have a citation for this).

But, yes, it would be nice to have the option to change the sort order, as well as the current filtering. One day, if it doesn't make the UI too complicated. I value simplicity.

I'd argue there is a difference between a blog and a newsletter, but that would take longer to discuss than I have right now. But you're right that the boundary between the two is extremely blurry.

However, I'm guessing you tried to submit a Substack URL and was told newsletters aren't accepted? Even if I allowed newsletters, I wouldn't add any Substack newsletters because of the platform's fascist-supporting tendencies.

In which case they're in the pool of (currently) 2,888 other suggested blogs that I've yet to evaluate.

Give it a rest. The scope is in the FAQ. Blogs get added when I have time.

As you can tell from the site, there are many, many suggestions and I’m not finding time to add many new blogs https://ooh.directory/about/charts/

There is no guarantee any blog you suggest, even if it’s in “scope”, will get added before either of us die. If that’s a problem save yourself all this angst and don’t suggest anything.

Yeah, from a HN point of view I imagine most blogs are tech blogs. But for me, trying to curate a wider selection, tech blogs should be a very small minority. There are so many non-tech categories that I’m much more interested in populating, never mind categories that don’t even exist yet. A real joy is finding a niche topic where there are loads of current blogs, all linking to each other. Blogspot is full of that kind of thing.

It’s not “useless” it just depends on what it is a user is looking for. I decided that alphabetical as default makes most immediate sense to someone arriving at the site. “Last updated” could also look a bit random initially.

Thanks for the kind words. The source is user suggestions and my own searching and browsing.

I do sort of track outbound links, so that I can show which domains a blog links to most, which can sometimes give a sense of what the blog is about.

But, while I haven’t analysed the data, I suspect the links from one blog to another would be a very tiny percentage of the overall outbound links. It’s the kind of thing that might have been more interesting/useful in the olden days of blogging when more people linked to each other, and replied to each other, via blogs rather than social media.

That’s one problem with categorising blogs - they often shift focus over time, like Simon’s. I’ve added it to the AI category now - thanks for pointing that out!

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.

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?

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?

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 can't tell why the post ended up on HN

Me neither.

Personally I'd always want "today", never "tomorrow".

So now we have two extra buttons on the form.

And perhaps the extensive user testing that gov.uk do would discover that for most people this added UI complexity makes the form less usable than keeping it as simple as possible.

Ah, sorry for misunderstanding. I don't have any suggestions I'm afraid. I'm not yet short of blogs on many topics to add :)

I don't understand what you mean.

As the owner of the site, just to set everyone's expectations… There are currently more than 1,000 sites in the pool of submissions, and I'm probably approving 20-30 per week, depending on time available.

Also, a large percentage of those submissions are related to tech in some way, mostly due to last time the site featured on Hacker News. Given that I try to approve a mixture of topics every time I do a few, don't expect to see your blog about [computer/internet/programming/etc] appearing on the site immediately!

Only selected parts. There's a lot of stuff that isn't super interesting, or isn't super interesting in fragments, or just doesn't work as short fragments. So there's a lot of editorial decisions about what would make good tweets – often "boring" bits make for good, relatable tweets though.

I often edit the tweets by omitting a few words if it's required to make them fit into 280 characters. Which is easier than the first few years when I had to fit them into 140 characters.

Hi, that's my site. It's been running for twenty years, through two complete cycles of the diary, and we've just started the third.

You can read it on the site (or via its RSS), or get each diary entry via email https://buttondown.email/pepysdiary , or get excerpts throughout the day in "real time" on Twitter https://twitter.com/samuelpepys , or the same on Mastodon https://mastodon.social/@samuelpepys

Feel free to AMA

Ooh, I've probably got some more since then, because I hadn't finished working my way through the diary (for the second time) when I sent you that lot.

At the moment I've only added blogs that have been updated within the past year or so. But over time some blogs will obviously stop updating.

It's currently possible to filter each category to only show blogs that have been updated within the past week/month/year, which should help.

If it gets to the point where there are lots of blogs that are still live, but haven't been updated for a long time, maybe I'll make the default to only show blogs that have been updated within a year or so. We'll see.

I can see which blogs generate errors of different kinds when fetching their feeds, so I'll be able to spot blogs that disappear. If that happens they'll be removed/hidden from the site.

I will be adding various OPML files at some point.

Definitely - but it's very useful to start off with a suggestion!

As it says on the About page (https://ooh.directory/about/):

> Some blogs appear in two or, occasionally, three categories. If it would take more than that, it ends up in the wonderland of Uncategorizable.

Thanks. Strange, not sure why. Lots of people are managing to see it fine, but there's obviously something not quite right somewhere...

There's always "Personal blogs", which is a large number of them.

Hi, it's my site. I find the links by exploring*, and I add and categorise them manually.

* or "surfing the net", if you're old enough.

Looks OK from here. What are you seeing?

(It's my site.)