You’ve actually convinced me that this was at least a reasonable idea but I don’t think a gopherhole shop rating system would be in theme with the closely knit community dynamic we have.
The protocol was going to have a feature-rich, shopping-friendly set of extensions, but when this was proposed in 1993, there was a community backlash against commercialising the gopher; read Albert Rosetti’s booklet about what happened. This is roughly how the gopher protocol became both liberated and hyperstable in the early 90s.
Imagine if a gopher wanted to sell or otherwise pass on some old computer hardware. It makes sense to share that on their gopherhole: And since payment handling is ~ always legally middle-manned by a payment handler who will handle the payment anyway, the protocol wouldn’t need to be extended to be a payment processer.
On the other hand, I would be against paving paradise to put up a parking lot.
I guess this is like telling people crammed into a cubicle farm office that air conditioning is bad, and then being banned by an air-conditioner-repair-person. The fact that they’re chained to an office with stale, mouldy air implies more than one thing has gone wrong.