Ooh.directory: a place to find good blogs that interest you

https://ooh.directory/

by hisamafahri • 5 months ago

618 139 5 months ago

ooh.directory

ehecatl42• 5 months ago

No blogs or categories were found matching emacs.

OK then.

wilkystyle• 5 months ago

You can be the first! (I'd be interested!)

throwaway15012• 5 months ago

I've submitted entries but they never get added. I have no idea how they decide what makes it into the directory and what doesn't so I've stopped trying.

alansaber• 5 months ago

Vim wins again

8organicbits3• 5 months ago

There's an RSS planet that curates blogs about emacs, for anyone who is looking.

https://planet.emacslife.com/

I've been building a list of blog lists, and I know of 136 feeds that use that category tag. (Open filters, select emacs under category, adjust language as needed).

https://alexsci.com/rss-blogroll-network/discover/

throwaway15012• 5 months ago

> No blogs or categories were found matching emacs.
OK then.

Exactly. This is a deeper problem with ooh.directory, that the review process is opaque. They do not explain why something is added or rejected. I do not care much about Emacs itself but I submitted several of my favourite bloggers who write about retrogames, gaming rigs, and custom keyboards. None of them were added. None at all.

I do not think we should be encouraging closed directories like this in the community. I would much rather see a transparent directory where the review process is clear.

philgyford14• 5 months ago

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.

philgyford14• 5 months ago

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?

simonw2• 5 months ago

Given how worried everyone is about the AI slopocalypse where the internet is drowned in LLM-generated junk content maybe it's time for a resurgence of human curated directories like this one.

gesis4• 5 months ago

Let's bring back the webring.

8organicbits3• 5 months ago

I joined a web ring last year, but I'm uncertain about it. Modern web rings tend to automate updates to the next/prev buttons, so I'm never sure what I'm linking to. The web ring owner acts as curator, but I don't know how much effort they put in to keep slop or other undesirable content out.

BoingBoomTschak• 5 months ago

I'm part of one and I don't think it really promotes discoverability. What could work would be some kind of search engine restricted to said webring to make a button to list similar articles. At least I would click on such a button!

roxolotl• 5 months ago

The no ai webring is full of really unique stuff. There’s definitively people out there still doing webrings. Now we need a metawebring.

https://baccyflap.com/noai/

kogasa240p• 5 months ago

As someone who wasn't around in their true heyday I'm all for it.

myth_drannon• 5 months ago

It was tried before (e.g. Dmoz) and it does not work after it becomes popular.

I'm thinking more like just taking all the text files from 80-90s and making a separate static, frozen in time internet.

simonw2• 5 months ago

Dmoz was trying to replicate the Yahoo! style of directory, which requires being comprehensive.

Today we don't need comprehensive, we need maximum signal and minimum noise.

bookofjoe2• 5 months ago

Hear! Hear!

deadbabe4• 5 months ago

Yup. Search engines will basically be dead. Anything you’d type into a search engine you will probably prompt from an LLM instead.

But hand curated human directories should in theory have a very high signal to noise ratio. Every link should take you to a quality site.

NookDavoos• 5 months ago

The first blog i found on this website was full of ai generated image slop

https://www.bankeronwheels.com/

consulinho• 5 months ago

There is no ai in the content, in fact it's probably the best finance blog in Europe - the ai likely used it to be trained on. Cover images probably yes but they use their own characters. Anyways, cover images are not what you're there for. Content is absolutely top notch.

PaulRobinson• 5 months ago

A good idea, and one I had myself recently.

Some suggestions: I know none of us like "the algorithms choosing", but I think we can do better than alphabetical order. Number of clicks you see (popularity), or number of inbound links google tells you about would be good.

I also think you've gone to great effort, but it's still very light in some categories. I hope you keep going - what's your data source? Are you tracking outbound links from the ones you have indexed to find new blogs?

gnramires• 5 months ago

I like the idea of some kind of algorithm minimalism, or at least parsimony; but I also think sometimes it might be appropriate? In this case, another approach would simply be randomization, which doesn't favor any name (Aaaaaron Aaaaanderson's blog :P ), this randomization can be consistent (such that you can find something you wish in linear time).

I think equally important is algorithmic transparency, that is, that the algorithm be publicly disclosed (although I think simplicity is a component of transparency: if you just dump a huge incomprehensible algorithmic mess somewhere that's not very helpful), so that you at least know what you are getting into, and better yet have some ability to choose and make educated critique of the current state of things (i.e. does the algorithm just maximize engagement like a slot machine? or does it optimize for some kind of helpfulness?).

philgyford14• 5 months ago

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.

ramon156• 5 months ago

I'm subscribed to the Index Issue (i think that's the name) which has a nice short list of curated blogposts. Works for me!

Granted, I'd love a more technical version. Perhaps anyone here could start one?

Make an RSS list, pick the ones out you liked and BAM, you got my sub :)

8organicbits3• 5 months ago

I was looking at the RSS spec a while back to figure out how the category field was supposed to work and ended up digging up web directory history.

https://alexsci.com/blog/rss-categories/

Syndic8, DMOZ, NewsIsFree, and TX (lost to history?) used the same taxonomy approach seen on ooh.directory. All are defunct now, but DMOZ appears to live on as curlie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_directories

Technically, we could tag our RSS feeds with the taxonomy defined by ooh.dir, which would allow us to automatically sort blogs into topic groups, but I haven't found a single feed that uses the approach. We end up with ad-hoc category labels that are challenging to deduplicate, or more often, uncategorized blogs.

zozbot2344• 5 months ago

Taxonomy labels are often deduplicated on Wikidata, the unofficial "hub" of the modern Semantic Web. There's already a defined property for matching DMOZ/Curlie labels, and others could be added if relevant.

voy707• 5 months ago

the internet got just a little bit more human again.

throwaway15012• 5 months ago

The problem with https://ooh.directory/ is that nobody can tell what gets added and what doesn't. Submissions go through an opaque review process and a lot of good submissions don't make it.

Just try searching your favorite bloggers in ooh.directory. 9 out of 10 times they'll be missing from the directory.

I'd prefer a more transparent directory where we can can tell why something is or isn't added.

esafak• 5 months ago

An RSS feed of changes would help.

philgyford14• 5 months ago

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?

7bit• 5 months ago

And then what? You're looking at a list of hundreds of submissions and why they have been added or not added, which completely defeats the purpose of that website.

I don't get the point of these sites, because it I want a curated list, I visit the front page of hackernews or reddit -- and trust the system.

Ohh.directory I'd the same thing, except for a different selection process.

You either trust it or you don't.

throwaway15012• 5 months ago

You either trust it or you don't.

don't see why it has to be this way. It doesn't take much to tell us what the review process is like and what gets added and what does not. If I know in advance that the blogs I submit are outside their scope, then I won't waste time submitting them.

I also don't see why there can't be an open directory of websites where the community makes decisions about what to add instead of leaving it to a single individual.

zozbot2344• 5 months ago

Submissions go through an opaque review process and a lot of good submissions don't make it.

That's no different than the old DMOZ.

philgyford14• 5 months ago

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!

bookofjoe2• 5 months ago

FTW!!!

listenfaster• 5 months ago

I’ve always enjoyed your curation, especially in the music department. Thanks so much!

xmprt• 5 months ago

removing the suggestions form entirely, because it results in exactly this level of expectation

I think the expectation is less about the suggestions form and more because of the tagline "a place to find good blogs that interest you". If the tagline was clearer that these were hand curated, then I think no one would care about the process you currently have.

danko• 5 months ago

Just wanted to say: thank you for making and maintaining this. I’m sorry that so many of the initial comments on this HN post are from one person complaining that their submissions didn’t get accepted. That’s the thing with the personal web: it’s personal! It’s what that person wants, which happens to be the thing that makes it great. If you don’t like it, the rest of the internet is still there.

tinyhouse• 5 months ago

fyi, I just signed up and the confirmation email went to my spam folder (Gmail).

Kye4• 5 months ago

> 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.

Essentially my trouble with every "share your blog" type thing that appears on HN. Some of the blogs do show some interest outside computers, but those posts are quickly swamped by more computer touching.

I appreciate the curation in favor of diversity of interest here.

edit: You can see it in a lot of the suggested alternatives elsewhere. I think it's hard for someone to really get it if computer touching is their life. Curation like this is vital to avoid regression to the mean.

seg_lol• 5 months ago

I’m sorry you don’t feel this hobby site run by one person doesn’t have a sufficiently transparent process

_HMCB_2• 5 months ago

Perfect reply. Thank you for your efforts. I’ve bookmarked and favorited your website.

Eupolemos• 5 months ago

Hey - just wanted to say thank you.

I wanted to make a blog and used your site to find interesting looking blogs for inspiration.

It was wonderful <3

add-sub-mul-div• 5 months ago

Sometimes I think about making public a utility or data set that I've curated for my own use. I don't necessarily intend to continue it or support it but I think, maybe some people would find it useful in its current state. And then I think about getting these comments all the time and it seems not worthwhile.

QuadmasterXLII• 5 months ago

Plenty of blog aggravators with transparent curation processes exist, and are terrible. No need to make this one like the other others that are worse than it.

akoboldfrying• 5 months ago

blog aggravators

Love it

pibaker• 5 months ago

So what? This website is just some man's collection of blogs, not a government registry funded by tax money. It does not seem to even take public donations. Why shouldn't its maintainer be allowed to exercise personal judgement in his curation efforts? Why does he have to justify putting one blog up there but not another any more than the New York Times need to justify publishing one article but not another?

It is weird how entitled people can get when it comes to things others create and distribute for free. The same seems to happen with open source software in general too. Somehow the ones who pay nothing, ask for the most.

throwaway15012• 5 months ago

So what? This website is just some man's collection of blogs, not a government registry funded by tax money. It does not seem to even take public donations. Why shouldn't its maintainer be allowed to exercise personal judgement in his curation efforts?

Unnecessarily aggressive response from you given that you are addressing positions I never actually took. Of course the maintainer is entitled to exercise personal judgement about what gets included. When did I say anything othrwise?

What I am saying is that, as a user, it is frustrating to spend time putting together submissions and then hear absolutely nothing back. I am not demanding special treatment, just a basic acknowledgement or a brief explanation when something is rejected. Expecting that level of courtesy when you interact with a project does not strike me as unreasonable. If that is considered entitlement, then yes, I suppose I do expect basic courtesy from people I engage with.

All I am asking is whether anyone might be interested in building something more community-ish, where decisions do not rest entirely with one individual. If someone creates that, I am happy to support it with my time and contributions. That is the only point I am making.

_HMCB_2• 5 months ago

Why does it have to scratchpad your itch? You’re welcome to create and maintain your own resource. Have at it, nobody is stopping you and maybe you’ll bring your own ideas and perspective to curating blogs. Can’t wait to see what you come up with.

redmattred• 5 months ago

This is great. Some good nostalgia vibes.

The fact that it’s not exhaustive and is a reflection of the creator’s taste is a feature, not a bug.

tiffanyh• 5 months ago

https://minifeed.net is another similar site that I’ve enjoyed.

freetonik2• 5 months ago

I also maintain a human-curated directory (and search engine) of personal blogs at https://minifeed.net

You can submit a blog here: https://minifeed.net/suggest

Criteria is pretty simple:

- Must be written by a human.

- Must be in English (for now).

- Must have a valid RSS feed.

- Must not be purely a "micro-blog", i.e. must have some content other than tweet-sized status updates or links.

throwaway15012• 5 months ago

This looks great. Your https://minifeed.net/about page is really nice too. Well done! You should make it a top level post if you haven't already

freetonik2• 5 months ago

I've been meaning to do this for a year now, still feel like there are things to improve before I do that :)

ranger_danger• 5 months ago

Must be written by a human

How does one ascertain this?

wonger_• 5 months ago

Honor system and smell test, I would think

rebel_druid• 5 months ago

From what I have seen over the years, the problem with such aggregation sites has been that the maintainer eventually loses interest or does not renew the domain etc.

The only way to maintain long term interest in such sites would be to have it as a github site/or a long term commitment, community contributions with some kind of community filtering/voting to maintain the quality of submissions.

coffeecoders• 5 months ago

I am a fan of https://blogs.hn/. It is mostly HN-like content, but I visit it daily. I wish there was a "new" view though.

itrinity• 5 months ago

Nice nostalgia but are these directories actually being used by anyone?

unsungNovelty2• 5 months ago

I am pretty happy with https://marginalia-search.com/. It's kind of my secondary search engine at this point. I can always search for anything and find indie websites writing about the topic.

It also helps with the dread of not having to add my personal site to yet another blog curation site which I don't know will:

1. Be maintained in the longer term.

2. Would be willing to add my site to the curation site.

myk-e• 5 months ago

pretty sweet!

wanderingbit• 5 months ago

This has already helped me find extremely useful writings on a niche topic of mine. Thank you!

unsungNovelty2• 5 months ago

Just sharing what I know. :)

freediver2• 5 months ago

Just worked on adding categories to Kagi Small Web (inspired in part by OOH) last night.

https://kagi.com/smallweb

This did give it a new dimension.

Each has its own RSS feed too as well.

gdulli• 5 months ago

That's great, will you also add the category field to the text file in the repo? These projects are often heavy on tech blogs and I'd like to filter those out.

freediver2• 5 months ago

We are classifying them at runtime, per entry. More accurate and LLMs are cheap.

bcraven• 5 months ago

It feels like we're _so_ close to having StumbleUpon back.

tommica• 5 months ago

It was an amazing site. Just click on the bookmark and discover something new.

Curiositry• 5 months ago

https://www.readsomethinginteresting.com/

juleshenry• 5 months ago

Wow, I just worked on a blog sophistication analyzer. I wonder what could be learned by comparing all blogs here together: https://github.com/juleshenry/-shtetltleths-

zahlman• 5 months ago

I'm not sure about the orange on dark green colour scheme, but I like that the site is responsive and light-weight, and manages to show a bunch of fancy effects in pure CSS.

I was surprised that Simon Willison's blog is listed in Python and Web Development categories, but not AI.

philgyford14• 5 months ago

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!

cosmicgadget3• 5 months ago

Quick, Simon, pivot to cooking!

deadbabe4• 5 months ago

Please considered sorting websites by last updated date by default, instead of alphabetical which is a pretty useless method of presentation. It works better for books and static pages, not dynamic internet content.

philgyford14• 5 months ago

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.

deadbabe4• 5 months ago

But random orders lend themselves better for discovery? If somebody’s site is just AAA they will be at the top of the list forever, what value is there in that?

rubyfan• 5 months ago

ooh this reminds me of the old internet. Altavista, Yahoo, etc. all had lists like this!

It's fun to click about and go down the rabbit hole of things I might not normally see in my daily routine which is now mostly about avoiding the hellscape of the modern internet.

d_silin• 5 months ago

Have another look at this great project!

https://hnpwd.github.io/

rednafi• 5 months ago

I have a page on my site dedicated to list the blogs I frequent:

https://rednafi.com/blogroll/

Lucent• 5 months ago

Turns out my blog is actually a newsletter? Seems like a distinction without a difference.

philgyford14• 5 months ago

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.

ksec• 5 months ago

Does the name ooh has anything to do with Yahoo. Because that was what reminded me of, but I cant find anything about naming info on the site. So just wondering.

There are lot of internet article farming, but the real internet is increasingly "small". So I am not surprised we are back to where we started again; Directory.

brightbed• 5 months ago

Opened it, and two clicks in I immediately found a blog that made me say “woah”. Success!

dang• 5 months ago

Related. Others?

A collection of 2,299 blogs about every topic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40693787 - June 2024 (18 comments)

Remember to submit your blog to ooh.directory - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36458877 - June 2023 (6 comments)

Ooh.directory - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33719983 - Nov 2022 (167 comments)

frenzcan• 5 months ago

Wow, I’m making this my homepage.

mrmagoo17• 5 months ago

Wow! Somehow my personal/tech blog is listed there. If the author is reading, thanks for including it. I am flattered!

guites• 5 months ago

I'm working on something similar for Brazilian blogs. For now it's a collection of ~500 blogs, and I plan to expand it by following external links found in these blogs and then somehow finding out which are links to other br blogs.

Not really a curated list, but I would welcome projects that filter the existing blogs into categories and etc.

https://guilhermegarcia.dev/brcrawl

rdmuser• 5 months ago

Oh neat! I went and shared this with some Brazilian friends of mine. They tend to like stuff like this so I think it will make them happy.

I know I enjoyed checking out some sites you have in that list (using translation) so thanks!

I love browsing outside the anglosphere but it can be challenging sometimes finding curators that find regular new sites or posts to check out when other languages aren't part of your regular browsing routine.

polote• 5 months ago

On https://hnblogs.substack.com/ blog posts published on HN are collected everyday

MillionOClock2• 5 months ago

I just discovered this site and found it interesting, just a bit of feedback: AFAICT there is no way to filter between paywalled and non-paywalled websites, I wish there was one!

philgyford14• 5 months ago

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

MillionOClock2• 5 months ago

Unfortunately I forgot which site it was and did not check if it was entirely paywalled, but if I find it again and it is I will let you know! Thank you!

khet• 5 months ago

I love that blogging is taking off a bit again, and I think this trend will last.

I built BoredReading.com a few years ago because I enjoy reading but hate having to curate my own feeds, so this is a done for you kinda app.

anthk• 5 months ago

The best blogs are at https://wiby.me

teotimepacreau• 5 months ago

sadly ooh.directory is like many others indie blog directories english only. We need more foreign languages indie blogs. Mine is : https://www.teotimepacreau.fr/blog

renegat0x0• 5 months ago

In my database of Internet links I have many personal blogs:

- https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database

thiagowfx• 5 months ago

Exhaustive list of all blog directories I’ve heard of: https://perrotta.dev/2025/05/blog-directories/ (includes ooh.directory)

Ooh.directory: a place to find good blogs that interest you

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