31–40 of 91 posts
My partner works in corporate communications and so we frequently lament the enshitification, specifically the way social media as a concept destroyed so many things and now is experiencing its own gotterdammerung. It feels like at the moment we are in a middle place, waiting for the next trend. Perhaps it will be a return to the super personalization of the 1990s, where everyone was making content of their own and e…
My partner works in corporate communications and so we frequently lament the enshitification, specifically the way social media as a concept destroyed so many things and now is experiencing its own gotterdammerung. It feels like at the moment we are in a middle place, waiting for the next trend. Perhaps it will be a return to the super personalization of the 1990s, where everyone was making content of their own and e…
Yeah, can't wait to monetize that! Oh, darn...
I'm fairly certain that link-aggregation sites, like Hacker News, Reddit, Digg, Slashdot, and Lemmy have taken the place of Webrings. The sad truth about webpages is that people don't want to maintain them. People will put in their weekend project, and then the webpage sits there for the rest of eternity whether or not its relevant, and then what? When do you update the webring so that they add and/or remove pages? H…
Yeah, not sure if you lived through webrings because I don't think anyone that used them would agree.
When you have A, B, C, D, and E, all different webmasters on different parts of the internet making a webring of A -> B -> C -> D -> E -> A, things get really messed up when C stops responding to emails.
As others have said: you need a ringmaster for this to work. When C stops responding to emails, you tell B to update their page and point to D, for example.
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We have so many more technologies today than we did in the 90s. I don't know why anyone would look back at freaking Webrings when we have... I dunno... Wikis?
Now the Wiki administrator (A), could recruit B, C, D, and E to be moderators on the same Wiki. When C stops responding to emails, everything keeps going just fine.
Etc. etc.
I don't think anyone who actually lived in the 90s with directory services, Ask Jeeves, and Webrings would ever think about bringing those services back. Like, the good stuff were IRC, AIM, IRQ, USENET ?
Tangential, but one thing I noticed recently is how algorithms on sites like twitter and linkedin - especially linkedin - will penalize posts that contain external links. So it's very hard to even tell people about content on your own site. HN might be one of the few places left that don't seem to do that. Thinking more - what used to be common is a section called "other cool sites" or something similar, which would…
It is not a ring, but it can help you feel like it is: Someone shared this search site a while back: https://search.marginalia.nu/ It is a pretty great way to find smaller and more personal websites.
I'm fairly certain that link-aggregation sites, like Hacker News, Reddit, Digg, Slashdot, and Lemmy have taken the place of Webrings. The sad truth about webpages is that people don't want to maintain them. People will put in their weekend project, and then the webpage sits there for the rest of eternity whether or not its relevant, and then what? When do you update the webring so that they add and/or remove pages? H…
> I'm fairly certain that link-aggregation sites, like Hacker News, Reddit, Digg, Slashdot, and Lemmy have taken the place of Webrings. Link aggregation sites serve a completely different purpose from webrings, and don't substitute for them. That's why for many years, link aggregation sites and webrings coexisted.
There's a lot of "momentum" to technologies. I'm personally convinced that webrings are one of those ideas that died for good reason. There's just easier ways to organize ourselves online.
I promise you: if you want a big list of links to follow, just start a Wiki. Or share them in your own Lemmy / Mastodon. Or open up your own Subreddit. Its going to be easier.
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If you want to rebuild the feeling of early community-driven internet, then you should be looking up IndieWeb (https://indieweb.org/), and not just trying to resurrect random technologies from 30 years ago.
Tangential, but one thing I noticed recently is how algorithms on sites like twitter and linkedin - especially linkedin - will penalize posts that contain external links. So it's very hard to even tell people about content on your own site. HN might be one of the few places left that don't seem to do that. Thinking more - what used to be common is a section called "other cool sites" or something similar, which would…
The algorithms are probably trying to fight spam, but the end result is a closed, self-referential silo.
This webring isn't so much a ring as a wire, as one of the websites doesn't have the footer. This was always the problem with webrings in the first place - one broken link in the chain ruins it for everyone. Just like token ring based LANs
It should be possible to periodicallt crawl the ring participants and exclude them if they don't have the footer, right?
You'd probably want to measure click though rate and do manual review. Could also have a redirecting page so that the back button allows the visitor to flag or report something.
I'm fairly certain that link-aggregation sites, like Hacker News, Reddit, Digg, Slashdot, and Lemmy have taken the place of Webrings. The sad truth about webpages is that people don't want to maintain them. People will put in their weekend project, and then the webpage sits there for the rest of eternity whether or not its relevant, and then what? When do you update the webring so that they add and/or remove pages? H…