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Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

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Re: Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

#71

Post by timcederman »

mrexroad wrote: post #68
bradley13 wrote: post #34

2009-2014? That's not the old web. Or I'm old. Take your pick.

‘09-‘14 is hilariously not the “old web.” With that said, those of us who participated in what I consider the “old web” are likely “old” now, so… shrug ? Two of my favorite sites [0][1] still online—Lurkers Guide to Babylon 5 and ex-astris-scientia—were started in ‘92 and ‘98 respectively. Elegant content for a more civilized age. [0] http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/ [1] https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/

1992 would be super SUPER early for the web. Looks like it launched in 1994.

Re: Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

#73

Post by Scoundreller »

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #59
jperras wrote: post #57

I would posit that "old web" could be defined as the period before Google Search became public ( But maybe that's more a measure of my own age and perceptions rather than an accurate representation of the various eras of the internet/web...

Web Design Museum: Search Engines https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/exhibitions/search-engines-i...

Thanks for the link. In ‘96 I only had text-only/Lynx, so rarely/never got to see what the early versions looked like with a “real” browser.

Re: Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

#74

Post by mrexroad »

timcederman wrote: post #71
mrexroad wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

‘09-‘14 is hilariously not the “old web.” With that said, those of us who participated in what I consider the “old web” are likely “old” now, so… shrug ? Two of my favorite sites [0][1] still online—Lurkers Guide to Babylon 5 and ex-astris-scientia—were started in ‘92 and ‘98 respectively. Elegant content for a more civilized age. [0] http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/ [1] https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/

1992 would be super SUPER early for the web. Looks like it launched in 1994.

Yeah, I took a shortcut by just grabbing the copyright on page, but Lurker’s Guide to Babylon 5 has a slightly more storied history than being a www site. It started on Usenet before the pilot even aired iirc. I assume the ‘92 date encompasses the early content that evolved into the site it became.

With that said, its domain has changed a few times iirc… so maybe not the best example given the nature of the article.

Re: Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

#75

Post by sadlyuramoron »

Levitating wrote: post #31
sumtechguy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even Archive.org is rather limited in what it keeps. I know of a very large site that recently disappeared. archive only has part of the web html part of the site. Everything else is either gone or non accessible.

That's not my experience

[dead]

Re: Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

#76

Post by MarkusQ »

Gormo wrote: post #43
bradley13 wrote: post #34

2009-2014? That's not the old web. Or I'm old. Take your pick.

Yeah, I'd say "old web" is early '90s up through about mid-2000s or so. Geocities, Tripod, Angelfire, lots of standalone web forums, the early blogosphere, no social media, etc.

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/old-2

Re: Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

#77

Post by ryandrake »

z_rho_one wrote: post #14

Remember the good ol' days when we all thought that everything on the web would exist for eternity and over.

I remember the naive implication/expectation that a URL would be permanent. That once a file is identified by its URL, you could bookmark it and it would always be there. And absolute worst case, if someone really, really, really had to change a file's URL, they would politely return 301 Moved Permanently, and feel very bad about it.

Now people don't give a shit about URLs. Webmasters casually move files around all the time because they feel like it, and if links get broken, who cares, that's the referring site's problem! Their beautiful file hierarchy is more important than the web staying connected!

Re: Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

#78

Post by twotwigs »

Fun experiment:

Have an LLM “guess” random URLs seeded with words from a dictionary, iterating over each word and guessing a URL.

It guesses a lot of correct URLs. This is one method of “URL hunting” that doesn’t involve a 3rd party list or index.

Then just scan those pages for other URLs, visit them, and add a tally every time you come across a URL (for page rank).

Then search anything, see what the results are. You have invented a dark web search engine.

Re: Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

#79

Post by prmoustache »

juleiie wrote: post #63

Old web was kind of dumb anyway. You can put on the rose tinted glasses and feel elite about browsing some shitty site 20 years ago or enjoy the fruits of modern design.

> or enjoy the fruits of modern design.

Like web pages that load slower with high speed fiber than the old web did on 56k and ISDN connections?

Re: Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

#80

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

Here's a contrarian timeline: maybe the old web will return? My reasoning: when the "old web" was great, most people thought the internet was for nerds. Sure even casual users would forward funny emails to their friends, but when it came time for news most people would read the paper or watch the nightly broadcast. When they paid for their Big Mac they'd lay down cash. There were plenty of people using the internet, but again, they were nerds or nerd-adjacent. So, maybe the LLM-ification of everything could end up being like a huge filter, where all the non-nerds no longer see the point of anything and move on to gardens with even higher walls. And then what you have left will be a small subset of people who know how to reach their desired corners of the internet, just like before.
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