Update

gopher.md

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 
 Gopher (allegedly from "go for information") is a [network](network.md) [protocol](protocol.md) for publishing, browsing and downloading files and is known as a much simpler alternative to the [World Wide Web](www.md) (i.e. to [HTTP](http.md) and [HTML](html.md)). In fact it competed with the Web in its early days and even though the Web won in the mainstream, gopher still remains used by small communities (usually the more dedicated though, see e.g. [bitreich](bitreich.md)). Gopher is like the Web but well designed, it is the [suckless](suckless.md)/[KISS](kiss.md) way of doing what the Web does, it contains practically no [bloat](bloat.md) and so [we](lrs.md) highly advocate its use. Gopher inspired creation of [Gemini](gemini.md), a similar but bit more complex and "[modern](modern.md)" protocol, and the two together have recently become the main part of so called [Smol Internet](smol_internet.md). Gopher is much better than Gemini though. The set of all public gopher servers is called gopherspace. The Gopher protocol was defined in 1993 in [RFC](rfc.md) 1436.
 
-Gopher **doesn't use any [encryption](encryption.md)** (though some servers allow access via [Tor](tor.md)). **This is good, encryption is [bloat](bloat.md)**. Gopher also doesn't really know or care about [Unicode](unicode.md) and similar bloat (which mostly serves trannies to insert emojis of pregnant men into readmes anyway, we don't need that), it's basically just [ASCII](ascii.md) (of course you can employ Unicode as gopher just transfers files really, it's just that Unicode is not part of gopher's specification and most people prefer to keep it ASCII). Gopher's simple design is intentional, the authors deemed simplicity a [good](good.md) feature. Gopher is so simple that you may very well write your own client and server and comfortably use them -- **you can even browse gopher just by manually using [telnet](telnet.md)** to communicate with the server.
+Gopher **doesn't use any [encryption](encryption.md)** (though some servers allow access via [Tor](tor.md)... actually there's also some kinda encrypted "gophers" protocol too, but still it seems encrypting is thankfully not so popular at this point). **This is good, encryption is [bloat](bloat.md)**. Gopher also doesn't really know or care about [Unicode](unicode.md) and similar bloat (which mostly serves trannies to insert emojis of pregnant men into readmes anyway, we don't need that), it's basically just [ASCII](ascii.md) (of course you can employ Unicode as gopher just transfers files really, it's just that Unicode is not part of gopher's specification and most people prefer to keep it ASCII). Gopher's simple design is intentional, the authors deemed simplicity a [good](good.md) feature. Gopher is so simple that you may very well write your own client and server and comfortably use them -- **you can even browse gopher just by manually using [telnet](telnet.md)** to communicate with the server.
 
 **How big is/was gopherspace?** In 1994 there were over 1300 gopher servers (source: 1994 book *Finding it on the Internet"*), around 1995 there were already more than 6000  (source: 1995 video *Searching the Internet - Gopher | The Internet Revealed*). Most of them are now gone, in 2005 there were only 145 servers reported by Veronica search engine (source: *2007 gopher archive*), though Gopher recently saw a new wave of popularity. As of 2023 the Veronica search engine reported 315 gopher servers in the world with 5+ million indexed selectors, which they estimated was 83% of the whole gopherspace (the peak server count was in 2020 at almost 400). Quarry search engine reports 369 servers and 1+ million indexed selectors. Contrition search engine reported even 495 servers and 7+ million selectors. The "grawler" crawler of gopherspace.de reported 192 active servers at the beginning of 2016, 182 in 2020, 413 in 2023 (bumped its search list) and 380 in 2024. Gopher LAWN directory (made by [bitreich](bitreich.md)) contains 281 selected quality gopher holes.