cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/2841976
Spoiler warning: If you do not know yet, but want to read the Terry Pratchett novel Going Postal, please stop reading here. Spoilers below and in the links!
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The page XClacksOverhead.org lists public-facing websites broadcasting the X-Clacks-Overhead header aka Known websites carrying the signal.
I learned about this tribute to Terry Pratchett from a recent Golem.de article [German]: GNU Terry Pratchett: Eine Hommage für Eingeweihte an den Scheibenwelt-Erfinder
Citing Wikipedia:
Users of the social news site Reddit organised a tribute by which an HTTP header, “X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett”, was added to web sites’ responses, a reference to the Discworld novel Going Postal, in which “the clacks” (a semaphore system, used as Discworld’s equivalent to a telegraph) are programmed to repeat the name of its creator’s deceased son; the sentiment in the novel is that no one is ever forgotten as long as their name is still spoken.
A June 2015 web server survey reported that approximately 84,000 websites had been configured with the header.
I added this to all of my sites back in the day, there were browser extensions to display a little symbol in the address bar if a site had it enabled. Was honestly so wholesome and kind of humbling to see how many sites were taking part. GNU Terry Pratchett.
That’s one of the things that sucks about reddit being assholes.
works right there. It doesn’t on any of the alternatives
Apparently, it partially works in some lemmy apps. For those that see it as a link, the link doesn’t go anywhere. The [](/GNUTerryPratchett) markdown isn’t escaped above, so it shows as a regular link with no clickable text in sync. Other apps display it in other ways (or don’t show anything at all), none of which are the way it worked on reddit, but most importantly, there’s no single way that it shows.
My understanding was, that the header was invisible send through the internet as infinite tribute to Terry Pratchett, but I was not aware of any “display” or functionality of the header.
Can you please link or explain what was done with the header on reddit? Maybe similar usage can be kindly feature requested for Lemmy clients. I see good chances, that some devs are fans & geek enough :)
Supposedly, the invisible header is still there.
The markdown link was done as a way for individuals to join in on it.
It uses the standard link markdown of [x](y). On reddit it displayed as a single . showing with the GNUTerrypratchett beside it.
Now, the official app nor the site don’t recognize it either, despite it having worked for years on every app and the site. Hell, it’s not even working in the barely functional 3rd party apps now.
I don’t have any screen shots of it working to show what it looked like and why it was cool.
Thank you for the description, this sounds really like it was a cool, nifty feature :)
