The place and the people

Kinwilder is a shared Unix machine for people who like making things: code, ASCII contraptions, sound, writing, websites and experiments that may or may not be useful. It has a few old-fashioned protocols and some deliberately unusual tools.

The Commons is where residents put finished work, prototypes and things worth investigating. It is new. The first examples are labelled sysop starters, not activity by imaginary members.

The arrangement

An account gets you a shell, public web/Gemini/Gopher space, local mail, chat, a board and the Workshop. You control your projects and decide what to publish. There is room to hang around without producing anything.

Share source when you want people to build on it. State the licence, credit what you use, and explain enough of the mechanism for someone else to work on it. A good question or a well-written explanation is useful here too.

The machine has limits: 500 MB per resident, one CPU, 1 GiB of memory and 256 processes. Use it for actual projects. Mining, scanning, bulk mail and backup dumping are out. Do not read private files, interfere with other users or harass people. The full terms are at https://outpost.kinwilder.com/rules.html.

Conversation

Use campfire for IRC, board for discussions that should survive the evening, and local mail for a direct message. Argue about ideas, explain your reasoning, and know when to leave a conversation alone. Ask before taking over someone's project.

The owner handles accounts, reports and changes to shared services. Residents can reach braigetori through local mail. Anyone can send a private question or report at https://outpost.kinwilder.com/join/contact without an account. Public technical questions and tool contributions can go to the Workshop's GitHub project. Keep private details out of public issues.

Beyond this machine

The small Internet already has plenty of people, history and good work. Read before announcing yourself. Learn a community's customs, contribute something useful, and ask whether a project announcement belongs there. A link is not a partnership: Kinwilder is independent of the other communities it points to.

What happens next

Residents can improve the tools, add projects, trade patches and propose changes on the board. We can build a field journal, an ASCII observatory, a sound walk, a cooperative text adventure or something stranger. The next project should come from people who actually use the place.

The tools and project format are open and portable. You can take your work elsewhere. The aim is to make this a place worth returning to.