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Bring Back Webrings

arne.me

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Re: Bring Back Webrings

#41

Post by b33j0r »

I was old enough for a geocities homepage, but not old enough to get that a webring was a web-ring.

I thought it was some cool secretive club of people: “we bring you internet stuff, and we’re all friends. Maybe we’ll let you in, kid.”

Then I got a bit older and thought it was a lewd reference to circles of jerks.

It would be years later, after the blogosphere collapsed, and social media had given us all PTSD, when I first heard someone explain what it was.

Just a few minutes ago, actually! ;)

Re: Bring Back Webrings

#42

Post by jeromechoo »

I don't mind it. But as others have already said, a single website can easily break a web ring. Why not a simple "I'm Feeling Lucky" button that takes you to a random website in the ring?

Re: Bring Back Webrings

#43

Post by dang »

Related. Others?

Why there is no effort to bring webrings back as search quality has declined? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38177128 - Nov 2023 (12 comments)

Webring Technology - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37577861 - Sept 2023 (30 comments)

Ask HN: What Modern Alternatives for WebRings are there? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36630750 - July 2023 (3 comments)

Webring History - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34846719 - Feb 2023 (12 comments)

What ever happened to webrings? (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33585201 - Nov 2022 (111 comments)

Homebrew Computers Web-Ring - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32033833 - July 2022 (11 comments)

HomeBrew Computers Web-Ring - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29272595 - Nov 2021 (14 comments)

Mischa's Cursed Webring - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26358952 - March 2021 (92 comments)

Ask HN: Why are webrings not a thing anymore? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26242005 - Feb 2021 (1 comment)

Show HN: I am trying to start a webring for geeks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23549471 - June 2020 (89 comments)

Bringing Webrings Back from the 90s - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19683896 - April 2019 (3 comments)

Ask HN: Anyone want to start a webring? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17618082 - July 2018 (4 comments)

Re: Bring Back Webrings

#44

Post by amlib »

dragontamer wrote: post #33
bluSCALE4 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, not sure if you lived through webrings because I don't think anyone that used them would agree.

You click until you find a broken link in the chain and then everything goes to crap. 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 an…

I think you have missed the point, it's more about decentralization and increasing "locality" of the internet, get people close to each other or with shared interest to have their own communities. Webrings may not be all that great of solution technically but it does the job in that front.

Like in your wiki example, if A falls, now you don't have A B C D E F... well, the whole alphabet is gone :)

Re: Bring Back Webrings

#45

Post by ShadowBanThis01 »

appplication wrote: post #9
estambar wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of like this idea, but then instead of just left and right arrows I want to be able to travel in a multi-dimensional space :)

This could be pretty basic browser extension. A little banner at the top or bottom: “websites like this one”

Or... or.... a little banner that says, "From around the Web:"!

Re: Bring Back Webrings

#46

Post by ShadowBanThis01 »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #25

I was thinking about this less an hour ago Specifically I want my personal site to be a part of a “web 1.0” ring, where everyone uses technology that predates web 2.0 frameworks (Wordpress, AWS, CF etc…) and you generally roll your own everything.

I like the idea, but ugh do not bring back the asinine "Web 2.0" term. Fortunately "Web3" has failed to gain the hype "Web 2.0" did.

Stupid labels should die already, starting with "Gen [whatever]."

Re: Bring Back Webrings

#47

Post by ShadowBanThis01 »

6510 wrote: post #39
bsuvc wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be possible to periodicallt crawl the ring participants and exclude them if they don't have the footer, right?

Could do that before the user is forwarded to the website. Remove them for a day, then 2, then 4, then 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 etc it is not expensive to keep checking. Could send email too. 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.

But definitely only remove them for powers of two days, because... geek cred.

Re: Bring Back Webrings

#48

Post by gnutrino »

everdrive wrote: post #35

Webrings still exist. They're not mainstream. To the extent that the internet is "ruined," it's that the mainstream internet is ruined. There's no going back from this. The only option is to ignore much of the mainstream content on the internet. It will always be there, but critical ignoring is a required skill on the modern internet. The beauty is still there, it's just buried under mountains of trash, and your frie…

"critical ignoring" love this term

Re: Bring Back Webrings

#49

Post by dragontamer »

amlib wrote: post #44
dragontamer wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You click until you find a broken link in the chain and then everything goes to crap. 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 an…

I think you have missed the point, it's more about decentralization and increasing "locality" of the internet, get people close to each other or with shared interest to have their own communities. Webrings may not be all that great of solution technically but it does the job in that front. Like in your wiki example, if A falls, now you don't have A B C D E F... well, the whole alphabet is gone :)

> Like in your wiki example, if A falls, now you don't have A B C D E F... well, the whole alphabet is gone :)

Its far more likely for random individuals of a webring to disappear in my experience.

Ex: A could be the starting point of the webring. When C disappears, then D, E, and F are inaccessible. (A -> B -> Broken page).

A wiki is a single point of failure: you make A more reliable so that everyone has the information. A webring is an infinite number of single points of failure: a single failure (broken link / 404, etc. etc.) messes the entire ring up. Its horrible.

Re: Bring Back Webrings

#50

Post by swatcoder »

dragontamer wrote: post #19

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…

> maintain them

Maintain what?

They’re documents. They document things. As long as there’s a tool that knows how to parse the document, which is outside the role of the author, the document remains complete. There’s nothing to maintain.

The contemporary fetish for timely ephemera is a quirk of social media feeds and a generation that grew up immersed in them, not some baseline criteria for how the internet needs to work.

As automated search engines and social media feeds continue to drown in spam and engagement-porn, expect to see a resurgence of hand-curated web rings, directories, and marginalia-like scoped search engines, that variously highlight timely, historical, and evergreen content.

You’ll be surprised what an untouched document from 5 or 15 or 25 years ago might reveal to you, once you can actually find them again.

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