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Does anyone remember websites?

tttthis.com

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Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#71

Post by pasquinelli »

KGIII wrote: post #39
ambrosite wrote: post #30

I do remember those websites. For me, the difference is that now the Web is much more useful, but back then it was a lot more fun. True, you could sometimes waste hours following random links hoping to find something good, but the thrill of discovery when you stumbled across a gold mine of information was a huge part of the appeal. Nowadays, anyone with a basic understanding of search engines can find almost anything…

Browsing vs. searching. We don't seem to do much browsing anymore. We search and selectively pick what we consume. It's faster but, as you say, I don't think it is as fun. I used to enjoy picking a subject and then clicking all the DMOZ or Yahoo! links. I'd dig through webrings and and link aggregators with wild abandon. Now, I search a term and click on the first few results, at most. Sure, there are exceptions but…

i don't think browsing's that rare, actually, it's just different, having been centralized by facebook, tumblr, wikipedia, reddit, and the like. it's less like going out and exploring the web and more like just living there.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#72

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

ambrosite wrote: post #30

I do remember those websites. For me, the difference is that now the Web is much more useful, but back then it was a lot more fun. True, you could sometimes waste hours following random links hoping to find something good, but the thrill of discovery when you stumbled across a gold mine of information was a huge part of the appeal. Nowadays, anyone with a basic understanding of search engines can find almost anything…

It would be kind of cool to make a modern network of sites robots.txt'ed out of search engines.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#73

Post by always_good »

outsidetheparty wrote: post #33
themodelplumber wrote: post #3

This is pretty harsh critique. I first got on the web in 1992 and what we have now is a paradise compared to what we had then. Sure, you may have to look with intent for what you want, but freely coasting around the web has always carried liabilities. It used to be "you'll find lots of junk" and the junk has simply diversified since then. I also noticed the author doesn't even use a single hyperlink in his own articl…

> what we have now is a paradise compared to what we had then Here's how I recall it: Back in the day, you'd search for subject {$foo} and you would find mostly websites written by some cranky bearded weirdo who is obsessed with {$foo}, who has devoted weeks of his time to personally collating his every thought about {$foo} into one ghastly-looking site. Nowadays, you search for {$foo} and find mostly beautifully tem…

> Nowadays, you search for {$foo} and find mostly beautifully template-designed pages of text written by indifferent fiverr freelancers who had about 20 minutes to stuff in as many keywords into as many column inches wrapped around as many ad slots as possible before moving on to the next subject.

Yeesh, does anyone else have this opinion?

I sure don't. It's never been more trivial to find good, enriching content.

How many of these posts are just HNers getting more crotchety in their old age? Sometimes it just seems like a pissing contest for who can be most cynical. ;)

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#74

Post by adrianratnapala »

It's clever of the author to use "website" in this more specific sense. Technically a "website" roughly means anything served as HTML over HTTP. But all us fogeys know what his title meant anyway.

But I still think he protests too much. The style subject-oriented websites which the author is referring to evolved slightly and got the new name "blogs". The blogosphere might not be as popular as social networking, but it is still huger than the web of the '90s.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#75

Post by [deleted] »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #65
ambrosite wrote: post #30

I do remember those websites. For me, the difference is that now the Web is much more useful, but back then it was a lot more fun. True, you could sometimes waste hours following random links hoping to find something good, but the thrill of discovery when you stumbled across a gold mine of information was a huge part of the appeal. Nowadays, anyone with a basic understanding of search engines can find almost anything…

Stumbleupon ? :P

[deleted]

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#76

Post by krapp »

Boothroid wrote: post #62
emodendroket wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that any different from spending an hour finding links on Wikipedia or HN or Reddit or Facebook or whatever you're into?

People don't seem to build personal websites in the same way anymore - back then they weren't doing it to generate clicks, page views, passive income, build their profile etc, and everything wasn't all slickly styled and presented on a modern blogging platform. As a result websites were more amateurish, idiosyncratic, original, and sometimes charming, and I think the essence of the creator's motivation or interests o…

The thing is, people do build personal websites, and that old web still exists. Do you really believe that, with (according to Quora) ~140,000 new sites being created per day, no one is putting amateur, personal stuff on the web anymore?

It's just that the web has gotten bigger and more mainstream, and most of us now limit our browsing to a few silos and then act as if everything that no longer bubbles up the filter must have ceased to exist.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#77

Post by tfha »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #72
ambrosite wrote: post #30

I do remember those websites. For me, the difference is that now the Web is much more useful, but back then it was a lot more fun. True, you could sometimes waste hours following random links hoping to find something good, but the thrill of discovery when you stumbled across a gold mine of information was a huge part of the appeal. Nowadays, anyone with a basic understanding of search engines can find almost anything…

It would be kind of cool to make a modern network of sites robots.txt'ed out of search engines.

It'd also be cool to make a search engine that catalogged all of the websites that other search engines politely did not.

Is there any proper enforcement of robots.txt or is it just polite? Because I don't see how one search engine could maintain an advantage if others start catalogging every site.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#78

Post by dbrgn »

ambrosite wrote: post #30

I do remember those websites. For me, the difference is that now the Web is much more useful, but back then it was a lot more fun. True, you could sometimes waste hours following random links hoping to find something good, but the thrill of discovery when you stumbled across a gold mine of information was a huge part of the appeal. Nowadays, anyone with a basic understanding of search engines can find almost anything…

I found http://lygte-info.dk/ (website about batteries, chargers, and more stuff like that) through a search engine when looking for specific information about a LiIon cell. But then I started clicking through that maze of links and found so much useful information that I would never have thought of searching for. I spent hours "trapped" on that page.

The navigation is crappy (randomly interlinked handwritten HTML-pages) but the content makes up for it. The article by tttthis very much resonated with me. Many modern sites look great but don't have all that much actual content.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#80

Post by userbinator »

ambrosite wrote: post #30

I do remember those websites. For me, the difference is that now the Web is much more useful, but back then it was a lot more fun. True, you could sometimes waste hours following random links hoping to find something good, but the thrill of discovery when you stumbled across a gold mine of information was a huge part of the appeal. Nowadays, anyone with a basic understanding of search engines can find almost anything…

Nowadays, anyone with a basic understanding of search engines can find almost anything they want within seconds.

Almost anything popular and rather insipid, yes. Try to find more detailed information on very specific topics, however, and you'll discover that search engines like Google have been optimising more and more for the former content, making it harder to find the latter. I don't think that's a good thing at all.

To add insult to injury, if you do try very hard to seek the latter by carefully repeating similar search queries with slight word tweaks, quotes, and trying to dig through all the pages of results to see if you've found what you're looking for, Google will quickly decide that you're a bot and either give you a CAPTCHA or just ban you for a little while entirely.

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