Directory listing for: diggings
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TEXT README.txt (20.1KB, 2026-08-18):
diggings -- prospect gopherspace
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What it is & how to start
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Howdy, partner -- welcome to the frontier of gopherspace.
diggings turns gopherspace into an expedition. Gopher is a
vast, quiet, half-forgotten frontier: thousands of small
servers, most never linked to, never indexed, never visited.
diggings rewards you for going out there anyway. Every
selector you reach is treated as unclaimed ground, and the
first time you set foot on one you strike gold (+1). Be the
first person ever to reach it and you strike a bonus (+100),
and your name is carved in as its discoverer -- on the
Klondike the creek you struck first took your name and kept
it, and a selector here does the same. You are a prospector,
a frontiersman, a gopherspace cowboy out past the edge of
the map -- and the map fills in behind you as you go.
The point is the going. It is easy -- on gopher as much as
anywhere -- to wear a groove between the same few holes and
call it a day. But a rut and a trail are both worn grooves;
the difference is a rut goes nowhere and the Oregon Trail
went two thousand miles. diggings exists to pry you out of
the one and start you down the other: the whole protocol is
out there, and most of it nobody has bothered to walk.
It is also a textboard laid over the whole protocol: every
selector, anywhere, is a thread. Wherever you land you can
read what other diggers left and pin up a verified post of
your own, 4chan-tripcode style -- so the gold rush leaves a
trail of conversation behind it, not just a leaderboard.
Talking pays like walking does: open a silent thread and you
strike +50, answer one nobody has answered yet and you strike
+10, and every reply after that is +1. Say @name!trip in a
post and that digger finds the thread in their inbox, which
pays nothing and is not meant to -- see "Your inbox" below.
You never leave the game to do any of this. diggings is a
proxy: it fetches remote menus and pages and rewrites their
links so a click carries you deeper without dropping out.
An "exit" row is always there if you want to step back onto
the open protocol -- the proxy is something you pass
through, never a trap.
It is the spiritual successor to the old `grpg`: same soul
-- surf, discover, get rewarded, leave a mark -- with none
of the battle/stats/death machinery.
To do anything social you stake a name first. That is free,
and the secret half of it is never stored, only hashed:
printf '/applets/diggings/diggings.lhs/login\tyourname#yoursecret\r\n' \
| nc gopher.someodd.zip 70
That returns a one-row menu linking to your session selector,
/applets/diggings/diggings.lhs/s/<token>. Bookmark it -- it is
your login, and anyone holding it acts as you. Lose it and you
just re-stake the same name#secret: same verified name!trip
identity, fresh token.
From your session menu you surf -- type a gopher location into
the surf box and you are off, earning gold for new ground as
you go. The bare URL /applets/diggings/diggings.lhs is the
landing menu, and you can surf anonymously with no name at
all; you simply earn no gold and cannot post.
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What's hot
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The front door and /applets/diggings/diggings.lhs/hot answer
one question -- is anybody out there? -- and answer it with
the only evidence here that proves a human turned up on
purpose: a comment.
A visit is a click. Clicks are cheap, half-automatable, and
you produce them in bulk just walking a menu. A post had to
be read up to, thought about, typed into a box, and be
something nobody had already said on that thread. So the hot
board ranks selectors by how many DIFFERENT diggers commented
there in the last 30 days, and by nothing else. Ties go to
whichever thread was spoken on most recently.
Thirty days rather than a named month because it is true on
every day of the year -- a calendar month reads "nothing yet"
for its first week, and this server has gone two whole months
without an event.
It is a short board, and often a board of one. That is on
purpose. One row reading "2 diggers talked here -- 2 days ago"
is better proof that gopherspace is still inhabited than ten
rows of somebody's afternoon crawl, and a quiet board is an
opening, not a failure. Above it sits the other half of the
claim, which is just counting:
101 claims staked, 46 in the last 30 days, by 18 diggers.
Under the ranked board sit the two panels that used to live
on the leaderboard: the latest posts across every thread, and
the most recent first-ever strikes. They are the same evidence
unaggregated -- the ranking says where people have been
talking, the posts say what was said and by whom, the strikes
say the map is still filling in -- and they belong on the page
that asks whether anybody is out there rather than on the page
that keeps score. Talk is the scarce thing, so it sits above
the walking.
The leaderboard is now only a leaderboard: the gold ranks, the
table of how gold is struck, and one line in the present
tense: which hole the most diggers have actually walked this
week. That line names a place and a count, never
a person -- who is about is something you learn by standing
in the same place as somebody, not by reading a board. It is
left off entirely when only one digger has been out, for the
same reason: one person's week is not a pulse.
Only ground that diggings actually fetched can appear on the
board. Reaching a menu or a text page means it was pulled down
and checked; other item types -- images, binaries -- are taken
on the link's word, never fetched, and so never qualify. That
is a deliberately stricter test than the posting rules use,
because this is the first screen a stranger sees and it is the
one place a made-up location must not be able to buy its way
onto.
There is no archive of past months, and you lose nothing by
that: nothing here is ever deleted, so any past window can be
worked out exactly whenever somebody wants a scrapbook.
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Your inbox
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Write @name!trip in a post -- the whole verified identity,
copied off one of their posts, with an @ in front of it -- and
that digger finds the thread waiting in their inbox, at
/applets/diggings/diggings.lhs/s/<token>/inbox. A row there is
a date, the thread, and who wrote it; following it lands you
on the thread, where the words are. Your session menu carries
the inbox and, when something is new, one line saying so.
A bare @name does nothing, on purpose. Names are not unique in
the diggings -- two secrets can stake the same one, and the
player table is keyed on the pair -- so a bare name is not a
digger but a set, and delivering to the set would hand anyone
who squats a popular name every word meant for anybody else.
The trip is the half that says which digger you mean, and it
is printed beside every post they have ever left, so calling
somebody is copying rather than remembering. Names keep their
case; trips are ten lowercase hex digits, no more and no
fewer. A name run or a trip run of the wrong shape is refused
whole rather than trimmed to fit, because trimming would
quietly redirect a word meant for one digger into another
digger's inbox. Write @@name!trip to say a name out without
calling it. If a call misses, the page that took your post
says so rather than leaving you to wonder.
A call pays no gold, to either of you. Staking a name is free
and unlimited, so any payout here would be a print-money
button two identities could work between them forever; and
gold is for walking new ground and for breaking silences,
which a call is neither. The carrying post was already paid at
its own tier.
Nobody is called twice by the same post -- that is the table's
primary key, not a rule the parser has to remember -- you
cannot call yourself, and a post dropped as a duplicate calls
nobody at all, for the same reason it pays nothing: the post
box is an ordinary gopher selector, so a refresh or a "back"
would otherwise be a cannon anybody could hold down. One post
can call at most eight diggers; a post naming more is still
stored whole, it simply stops delivering after eight.
What the inbox shows is a date, a place and a name, never a
word the caller chose. This is a private page an arbitrary
stranger can cause to render, and keeping the rows to those
three fields means the only parts a caller picks are which
thread and which name, both already public. What was actually
said stays on the thread, one click away.
There is no mute list and no rate limit beyond the duplicate
rule, and that is worth saying plainly rather than papering
over. Three things blunt it: a call pays nothing, so there is
no profit in it; a row carries no prose the caller chose; and
posts are append-only, so anything written at you stays
attributable to a name!trip for good. Note also that your
session token now opens your mail as well as your gold --
anyone holding it acts as you -- so /logout-all is the answer
if a token of yours is loose.
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What gold is struck for
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+1 surf a selector you have never reached
+100 ...and be the FIRST digger ever to reach it
+50 open a thread -- the first post on a selector
+10 leave the first reply on a thread
+1 every reply after that
The same table is printed in the game itself, at the foot of
the /diggers leaderboard, and the posting half of it appears
on your session menu, on every thread page and above the post
box -- so you never have to come back here to check.
Two conditions on the posting tiers. Undiscovered ground takes
no posts at all: nobody can talk on a selector nobody has
reached. Surf it once -- one click, and the walk pays you --
and the thread opens. (Storing the post instead would quietly
burn the +50 for everybody, since it would take the opening
slot without anyone being paid for it.) And the +10 is for
answering somebody else: open a thread and immediately reply
to yourself and that reply is worth +1, like any other.
Note what this does not promise. Gold is not farm-proof, and
was not before: surfing an item type diggings does not fetch
-- an image, a binary -- is taken on the link's word and pays
the discovery bonus without anything being checked. That is
an old, deliberate trade, and the posting tiers do not widen
it, since that surf already pays more than a post does. The
hot board applies a stricter test than the gold does.
The posting tiers are a total, not a bonus on top of a base:
the digger who opens a thread banks 50 and nothing more. Which
tier you get is decided by your post's position in that thread
-- first, second, or later -- so it is per thread, not per
player and not per day: you can open a hundred different
silent selectors and strike 50 on each, but you cannot strike
50 twice on the same one. Two diggers racing to open the same
thread resolve cleanly into one opener (+50) and one first
replier (+10); nobody gets paid twice for the same rung.
A post that is dropped as a duplicate is not a post, and pays
nothing -- so a refresh, a "back", or re-sending the same line
cannot farm gold. Neither can a wall of one-word replies to
yourself: they are worth +1 each, the same as walking to a
selector you have never seen, which is the point. Breaking a
silence is the scarce act; adding to a conversation already
under way is ordinary, honest work.
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Endpoints
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<loc> below is a base64url-encoded gopher location; <token> is
a 32-hex-digit session token. You never type these by hand --
they are produced for you and travel inside the menu links.
/applets/diggings/diggings.lhs
landing menu (gophermap)
/applets/diggings/diggings.lhs/login<TAB>name#secret
stake a name; returns a link to your session menu.
/applets/diggings/diggings.lhs/hot
what's hot: the selectors the most different diggers
have commented on in the last 30 days, then the
latest posts across all threads, then the most
recent first-ever strikes.
/applets/diggings/diggings.lhs/s/<token>/hot
the same board, with your session carried through.
/applets/diggings/diggings.lhs/s/<token>/inbox
your inbox: every post that has called your name,
newest first, and how calling works. Looking marks
the page read; nothing else does.
/applets/diggings/diggings.lhs/inbox
no mail -- an inbox is addressed to a name!trip and
there is no anonymous one -- just an explanation of
what a call is and a box to stake a name in.
/applets/diggings/diggings.lhs/diggers
gold leaderboard, the table of how gold is struck,
and a one-line note of which hole is busiest right
now. (Recent strikes and the latest posts used to be
here; they are on /hot now.)
/applets/diggings/diggings.lhs/s/<token>/diggers
the same leaderboard, but its links carry your token
so a look never drops your session.
/applets/diggings/diggings.lhs/s/<token>/logout
kill this session link --- the durable name!trip and
gold survive; re-stake name#secret for a fresh link.
/applets/diggings/diggings.lhs/s/<token>/logout-all
kill *every* session link for this name!trip --- useful
when a token of yours is loose somewhere you no longer
control. The durable identity (name!trip, gold) survives.
/applets/diggings/diggings.lhs/s/<token>
your session menu: who you are, your gold, whether
anybody has called your name, what posting pays,
what's hot right now, a surf box, a "resume" link,
your inbox, the two boards.
/applets/diggings/diggings.lhs/s/<token><TAB>host[:port][/sel]
surf box: type a gopher location, jump straight into it
as your session (this is how you earn gold).
/applets/diggings/diggings.lhs/s/<token>/go/<loc>
surf <loc> as you -- awards gold for new ground, touches
presence, renders the proxied page under the overlay.
/applets/diggings/diggings.lhs/s/<token>/thread/<loc>
the thread page for <loc>: discoverer, who is here, a
post box, the posts oldest-first.
/applets/diggings/diggings.lhs/s/<token>/post/<loc><TAB>text
leave `text` as a post on <loc>'s thread -- pays +50,
+10 or +1 depending on where it lands in the thread
(see "What gold is struck for" above). Any @name!trip
in `text` puts the thread in that digger's inbox.
/applets/diggings/diggings.lhs/go<TAB>host[:port][/sel]
anonymous surf box: type a gopher location and jump
into it with no name (earns no gold).
/applets/diggings/diggings.lhs/go/<loc>
/applets/diggings/diggings.lhs/thread/<loc>
anonymous surf and anonymous (read-only) thread view --
no gold, no posting, but you can still look around.
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From the command line
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Stake a name (the # splits display-name from the secret):
printf '/applets/diggings/diggings.lhs/login\tsomeodd#hunter2\r\n' \
| nc gopher.someodd.zip 70
Surf a hole anonymously (no name needed, earns nothing):
printf '/applets/diggings/diggings.lhs/go\tgopher.floodgap.com\r\n' \
| nc gopher.someodd.zip 70
Read the leaderboard:
curl gopher://gopher.someodd.zip/1/applets/diggings/diggings.lhs/diggers
Everything else -- surfing as a session, reading threads,
posting -- is reachable by following the links inside those
pages; the encoded <loc> and <token> segments are filled in for
you.
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How this works
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State lives in one SQLite file, .diggings.db, seven tables,
opened in WAL mode with a busy_timeout. Every gopher request
spawns a fresh
short-lived process, so the many concurrent readers and the
occasional writer cannot share process memory -- WAL plus the
atomicity of a single write statement is the entire concurrency
story.
Two players racing to be a selector's first discoverer both run
the same insert; exactly one wins the bonus. No lock files.
A tripcode is the classic stateless identity: name#secret
yields name!trip, where trip is a salted hash of the secret.
Same secret always yields the same trip; nobody without the
secret can forge it; the secret itself is never written down.
The session token is a convenience layer on top -- a random
bearer credential mapped to your (name, trip) so you do not
retype the secret every action.
The proxy fetches remote menus with curl. A remote row of an
enterable type (1 menu, 0 text) is rewritten to point back
through diggings carrying your token; every other type --
searches, binaries, images, URL: rows -- is left pointing at
the origin server, because proxying those is either broken or
pointless.
Every surfed page, and every thread page, also carries one row
that points straight back out -- "exit diggings, open this
page on its own server" -- so the proxy is something you step
through, never something you are stuck in. The surf overlay
also carries a "strike out" box --- type a gopher location
and jump straight to a fresh hole --- plus a row home to
your session menu. And every page a player has reached shows
a "first found by name!trip" credit -- and, once more than one
digger has been through, a count of how many: on its thread
page, and in the overlay each time anyone surfs it.
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Limits
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Gold is a leaderboard score; it does not buy anything yet.
There is no quality signal anywhere in diggings -- no votes,
no likes, no scoring of selectors or posts. It rewards
reaching new ground, not endorsing good ground: gamified
discovery, not gamified taste. The posts are a trail you
leave, not a score you chase. (Adding upvotes would quietly
turn it back into an engagement contest -- which is exactly
what it is not.)
The hot board does order selectors, and that line still
holds: it reports attendance, not opinion. Nobody rates
anything; it counts who turned up and says so. It also cannot
compound the way a popularity chart does, because a digger is
only ever counted once per thread per window -- a place runs
out of new people to count and drops off, so the board turns
over instead of crowning a favourite.
Personal gold never depletes -- you earn +1 for any selector
*you* have not visited, forever, and +1 for any reply you leave
on a thread already under way. The bonuses are the scarce part:
+100 for a first-ever discovery, +50 for opening a thread, +10
for the first reply to one. Each is settled the moment it is
claimed -- once a selector has a discoverer, an opener, or a
first reply, that rung is gone for good and everyone after gets
+1. Gold is only awarded for a selector that actually
resolves to something -- a fetch that fails, comes back empty,
or is just a "not found" error row earns nothing and records no
discovery, so dead selectors cannot be farmed.
Type-7 boxes accept either a name#secret stake or a typed
gopher location depending on the box; malformed input comes
back as a type-3 error row plus a link back. Names are capped
at 24 characters ([A-Za-z0-9_-]); posts at 2 KiB.
A thread holds one copy of any given post. Send text that is
already on that thread -- yours or anyone else's, from a
minute ago or a year ago -- and nothing is added and nothing
is paid; the page tells you to be more original. This also quietly fixes the
mechanical case, since a post box is an ordinary gopher
selector and a refresh or a "back" would otherwise re-submit
the whole post. The match is byte-exact, so different casing
or punctuation is a different post.
Anonymous surfing renders the proxy and overlay but earns no
gold and cannot post -- everything social needs a staked name.
Disconnecting mid-request just unwinds the process; there is
no long-lived stream here, every response is a finite gophermap.
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