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The site's definition of "content-first suckless" is more or less synonymous with "created before 2005". Which is fine if you are into that aesthetic, but it is a terrible way to judge the value of the content itself. A few lines of CSS to set sensible margins, spacing and text contrast isn't the end of the world. Heck even Wikipedia is not "content-first" enough to be included in the results. And it doubly sucks for those who are expecting the tiniest bit of accessibility on the internet.
There was a time, getting to be quite a long time ago now, when you'd search for something - software to run on your old SGI, pictures of your 1982 ERA Vans, etc. etc. - and you'd find it. You'd find it because someone's 'thing' was old shoes, and they'd built a web shrine to their thing. These were people who had knowledge of things unrelated to HTML/HTTP/CSS and so the sites were rudimentary.
You are right, the engine should focus more on content and less on the complexity or quality of the formatting - but I also kind of get it.
> Heck even Wikipedia is not "content-first" enough to be included in the results.
try searching “wikipedia” on wiby before claiming this next time, thanks.
Seems really strange that this would work on a per site not a per domain basis.
What set of Wikipedia articles are indexed by this engine?
Plain HTML typically has great accessibility. Its when you start adding CSS and scripts it worsens.
What damage does CSS do to screen readers and accessiblity? I've used several accessible browsers it has never bothered any of them.
Try using a screen reader on a website that uses HTML tables for layout and you will quickly realize how wrong that statement is.
There is a threshold for how much css/js gets loaded. Exceptions made for side wigits on a page, and web forums.
I've found myself confused by this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/load.php?lang=en&modules=ext.cite...
On a side note why does every wiki site have something like this? I can't tell what it is and haven't had time to look into it. But thats more than just a few lines of js to layout a page.
Lastly, some sites like Wikipedia have hundreds of millions of pages, allowing them in would swamp the index as some people cant help but want to submit hundreds or thousands of pages from the same site (which would get blocked). I don't have enough resources to carry the zillions of wiki pages and have them drown out everything else. Most people know where to go if they want to look something up in Wikipedia and Google does a great job of it for just about every query you make, there will be Wikipedia prominently up there as a top result.
If you want Wikipedia just search Wikipedia. I don’t need the first page of results filled with sites I already know about. Why does Wikipedia even need to be indexed at this point?
First two things I found with “Surprise Me”:
Computer Closet: http://www.computercloset.org/compindex.htm
Guide to Spam-like products: http://spam.budwin.net/
Already a fan.
I’m sure I could find something like this in Google if I tried hard enough, but damn, you just don’t see this kind of stuff in Google anymore (or at least I don’t).
EDIT: here’s another.
This is fantastic! Based off some of the other comments I don’t know if this will be a quality search engine, but I think this might be the second coming of StumbleUpon.
> Computer Closet: http://www.computercloset.org/compindex.htm
View source ...
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0">
:-)
> https://www.mrbreakfast.com/
Surf's up! That's 100% pure goddam information superhighway right there.
This is apparently FOSS under the GPLv2: https://github.com/wibyweb/wiby/
FWIW I don't see any mention of suckless on Wiby itself, so the headline may be misleading. As someone who has a negative impression of the suckless community, despite agreeing with their goals of "keeping things simple, minimal and usable", this matters.
Suckless for me stands primary for the idea, only secondary for the suckless.org crowd.
This is great. I would love to see engines of custom curated content, like the readsomethinginteresting.com blogs or academic articles.
The creator's description of the types of sites indexed (from the Submit page[0]):
> What kind of pages get indexed?
> Pages must be simple in design. Simple HTML, non-commerical sites are preferred.
> Pages should not use much scripts/css for cosmetic effect. Some might squeak through.
> Don't use ads that are intrusive (such as ads that appear overtop of content).
> Don't submit a page which serves primarily as a portal to other bloated websites.
> If you submit a blog, submit a few of your articles, not your main feed.
> If your page does not contain any text or uses frames, ensure a meta description tag is added.
> Only the page you submit will be crawled.
Some additional ethos info is on the About page[1].
It's kind of funny how many commenters expect all results filtered to their liking. Most often when the topic comes up, the crowd often denounces Google et al preselecting content. Can't have your cake and eat it, too.
Have you ever tried scrolling over things you don't like?
We need a search engine that prioritizes ad free sites over ads. The less ad a site has, the higher it will be ranked. And you will automatically get rid of all search spam following this one rule.
This is how you end up with a search engine for pay-walled sites
Or how you end up with a search engine for passion projects, open-source projects, community hosted sites and more.
Most are are now affiliate links built into the content.
Well, I just popped an inocuous search term ("dinosaurs") in there and the very first result was a page with the title:
"Evidence That Humans And Dinosaurs Coexisted"
So that actually kind of sucks.
But on the same page of results you also get things like this: http://mlwi.magix.net/synchronicity.htm
I don't see what sucks - we're talking about the WWW here, and we should expect the full spectrum of thoughts and opinions. Unless you're hoping that each and every boutique search engine will filter the results according to your preference?
I think the content not sucking is orthogonal to the design of the page not sucking.
Why does it kind of suck? Let people believe what they want to believe. It's not like it makes any difference to your life or theirs.
I thought it might be a lovingly handcrafted artisinal static site at least, but it's very very 90s web design.
I took this as a cue and searched some loaded terms.
"vaccines" and "covid 19" had decent results, mostly people's blogs and some sites trying to prevent misinformation.
"abortions" mostly gave statistics, a blog by a 14-year old student in China, and an extensive collection of writings in support of Ayn Rand and against Noam Chomsky.
"trump" gives the most perplexing results, which I don't really know how to describe. Interestingly, the Rand/Chomsky page shows up here too.
I suppose it depends on your definition of suckless, but all the sites that were returned were lightweight, and content-first. As for the content... interesting might be the word I'd use. And it definitely doesn't show up in mainstream engines.
this is absolutely amazing
i love it
Wiby is a great example of how welll a curated index cam perform.
I've been toying with the idea of like crowd sourced index curation. Like maybe backed off a git repo or something. Would be an interesting experiment.
I entered "hacker" and found this: https://wh0rd.ca/humor/text/Adequacy_org%20%20Is%20Your%20So...
A classic. I was very much that kid in the mid 90s too :)
Lunix indeed.
omg, that's awesome, lol
Falls foul of the old 'content stuffing' tricks where you'd have random text in white to fool search engines into showing your page for unrelated searches - I searched for 'projection TV' and got ape-o-matic.com which didn't feature projection TV at all... Except in the key word stuffed part of the page
QUOTE
r6000 1 real estate laws 1 "Kitty Hawk Inc." software 1 Mt. Mansfield 1 jake OR rothermel 1 obsession 1 REALTOR.COM REAL SELECT 1 black jack 1 micheal jackson hate 1 repair projection tv screen 1 v tech 1 german meats 1 compare automobile 1 varmvattenberedare 1 Free Family tree information 1 digsolve.zip 1 epson lx-800 dip switch 1 télévision 1 offf -road 1 "michael robertson" 1 flight attendants tower air 1 "westwood studios" 1 aled jones shirtless 1 boomtown 1 hampton court 1 pics of power rangers nude 1 linux fvwm 1 pissing pisses femal 1 Fresh water aquarium 1 file compare programm 1 1979 4x4 chevy trucks 1 beanie babie magic 1 Cheyenne Frontier Days 1 apedemak 1 pennies 1 rap hip hop ra 1 "loving every minute" 1 sat-a2 1 45 auto 1 shack map 1 micro dc30 1 providian 1 ski conditions 1 adult key sites 1 people finder telephone numbers 1 icebreaker 1 WWW.SONY.COM 1 WICKED WOMAN 1 bank-owned reo orange county 1 university maryland 1 teen hideout 1 canyon texas real estate 1 script of scream 1 Last-Minute OR orlando OR NurFlug 1 "eternal champions" 1 "barrel house" 1 midi files about slayer 1 xmas cards 1 flashnet 1 Judge Roy S. Moore 1 beautiful latino women 1 "Stacy Sanchez" 1 NASCAR Dale Earnhart 1 "mac warez" 1 puritan pride herbs 1 "
Searching for "metaverse":
- Mark Rosenfelder's Metaverse -- Bob's Reviews Women in Comics Zompist Phrasebook
- Metaverse Christianity and the Problem of Shame
- Piero Scaruffi's knowledge base -- Singularity Metaverse Blockchain Virtual Reality A Timeline of Artificial Intelligence A.I. slides Future of Technology Tributes Birthdays: a secular calendar of saints Centennial
The "sites which suck" filter seems to have left only sites of random blithering. After eliminating ad-heavy sites and the usual suspects, there's no easy way to rank. Now you need real content evaluation. Which is really hard.
You'd probably get better results by searching maybe 50 sites, such as Wikipedia and Brittanica for general knowledge, and a few just-the-facts new sites (Reuters, BBC, Japan Times, the Economist, the Guardian.) omitting their opinion articles. For popular culture, go for the trades - Variety, Chartbeat, etc.
A search engine that's just Wikipedia and Reuters sounds like the most boring website on the planet. Sometimes people don't want "just the facts," all the time. Sometimes they just want to have fun. And obviously "metaverse" won't yield many results in a 90s-style-website search engine.
Maybe im biased here.
But if wikipedia (which doesnt seem included) doesn't count as a content-first site, i dont know what does.
Yeah, the first result of the "surprise me" search is an early-2000s era style 9/11 conspiracy site. Brings back memories, but not exactly "suckless".
"suckless" often means for websites; loads quickly and does not overuse JavaScript.
I like the old web. And I love the old web revival. Been digging into wiby for many hours at the point the same websites appear more than once.
Works perfectly in w3m over Tor and returns useful and interesting
results in a fraction of a second. Bravo!
Renders poorly on an iPhone (way too small).
Searched for wow, got a lot of fishing sites. That was surprising.
Well most results are desktop sites. Mobile users probably aren't the intended audience.
It's so refreshing to be able to tab through search results without hitting a thousand irrelevant images or ads or menu items.
I searched NixOS and found really useful blog-articles, the kind you would find submitted to HN. Quite cool.
Talk about synchronicity, earlier today I was thinking that someone like this ought to exist, and here it is!
Thanks for sharing.
Zero results for requests in japanese, russian or hebrew. Suckless they say? What content?
I love this. I searched for guitar and every result felt like a geocities site circa 1997.
i remember when this site came out and the author posted it on 8chan /tech/.