# On the specialness of gopher (reply to ckeen)

Personally, I love and use gopher for the following reasons:

* It is clean -- no ads, no bullshit 
* It is fast -- text screams over the network 
* The citizens are also the creators -- not passive 
* High signal to noise ratio 
* As a on-and-off-again Linux user for the past 20 years, I have learned so much from setting up my server and reading phlog posts. I find it a truly valuable resource. (I mainly run FreeBSD now, gopher led me to it)

Ancient tools and utilities have become daily use items, and I like the people. I may disagree with a lot of the politics, but it is not so polarized on gopher that it causes a division. The general lack of comments helps this. A live-and-let-live atmosphere pervades.

Thats what makes gopher special to me in a nutshell.

* [0][gopher://vernunftzentrum.de/0/ckeen/phlog/2018-03-05-What-makes-gopher-special-for-me.md](gopher://vernunftzentrum.de/0/ckeen/phlog/2018-03-05-What-makes-gopher-special-for-me.md)