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You need a webring

shub.club

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Re: You need a webring

#41

Post by embedding-shape »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #24
embedding-shape wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't neccessarly have to be such a "ring" that you navigate from website #1 to website #2 and the order is always the same, and you cannot jump, or even do random browsing. I think initially the idea was mainly around the "ring" concept, but relatively quickly lots of different implementations did lots of different things, and we still called those "webrings" even though many weren't conceptually "rings" at all…

So part of it seems to be working together: I link to your site with the expectation that you link back to mine. Not a bad idea, also letting the site-creators coordinate who focuses on which sub-topic. But are there many examples of this in the real web?

> I link to your site with the expectation that you link back to mine.

I guess, but more collectively, so like "We both agree to share a list of websites we link to, and anyone who want to add their site to this list also agree to the same". It used to be popular in music, programming and web development blogs, that much I remember, but I can't say how popular it was at large, the web and the internet was pretty much mostly a geeky thing at the time (around 2000s).

Re: You need a webring

#42

Post by CM30 »

embedding-shape wrote: post #13
ravetcofx wrote: post #12

This is what will keep the web more human as we go forward into AI slop commercial web crap. Hand build your sites, talk about things your passionate about, share stories, art, things you make. And the web-ring connects you too others in the community with things you share similar interests in. This is what the web was for. Not everything needs to be about making money

> Not everything needs to be about making money I feel like this is what keeps ruining things, in almost any hobby/sector/ecosystem I come across. Initially, as the only people interested in the thing is doing the thing because it's fun and interesting, everything works out great, people helping people because helping people is fun and the thing is fun. After a while, somehow it starts to bring in money for some peop…

This is one reason I'm kinda fond of a lot of fan media related communities. Since things like fanfiction, mods and fan games are in legally murky territory, you can't really make money off of them, especially not directly.

It's a great deterrent against grifters and optimisers, since you can't sell your work and you can't set up a company to commercialise it, so anyone uninterested in the community or series has no incentive to get involved.

Sadly, it's really hard to achieve something similar in most fields, due to the incentive to turn everything into a side hustle.

Re: You need a webring

#43

Post by rapnie »

jimjimjim wrote: post #27
galaxyLogic wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So part of it seems to be working together: I link to your site with the expectation that you link back to mine. Not a bad idea, also letting the site-creators coordinate who focuses on which sub-topic. But are there many examples of this in the real web?

uh, the webring idea is OLD. Not quite "And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for two and a half thousand years, the ring passed out of all knowledge" old but close.

"Master System ruled unchallenged, the key to breaking its power -- five microchips disguised as gold rings, carefully hidden away.", Rings of the Master by Jack L. Chalker

https://www.goodreads.com/series/41810-rings-of-the-master

Re: You need a webring

#44

Post by charcircuit »

pverheggen wrote: post #29
galaxyLogic wrote: post #9

Not sure I get it. Why a "ring"? Why not just have a list of web-site URLs on a page and share that page with your friends and ask them to put that page somewhere on their site? "Ring" means you are navigating linearly and circularly. Isn't it better to provide a list of links so users can choose where they want to go "next"? And why should I have to go around the whole "ring" to get back to where I started from? The…

A webring is a circular doubly linked list - to insert a new site, you only need two existing sites to update their links. It's decentralized and works with any tech stack, including editing a static HTML file. It's a little silly if everyone is working off a centrally-maintained JSON file, you might as well turn it into a blogroll at that point.

>It's decentralized

But extremely fragile since if even one node in the network goes down the network is broken and if two go down then there will be sites no longer reachable from others. You want to know the other nodes in the network so you can deal with nodes that go down or leave the network.

Re: You need a webring

#45

Post by throwaway0665 »

I followed the web ring on the home page and the first person didn't continue the ring (they had no link to next) and the second webring only contained one other site. Pretty disappointing introduction to something I "need".

Re: You need a webring

#47

Post by efilife »

rhet0rica wrote: post #38
chopete3 wrote: post #37

The what and how parts are good but "why webring?" needs to be explained more. If the content is summarized and personalized for the user the search engine is already rendering similar pages.

This comment is such an elegant Rorschach test. Bravo.

Why? Are you implying his lack of imagination? Or how one can interpret the comment?

Re: You need a webring

#48

Post by forthwall »

throwaway0665 wrote: post #45

I followed the web ring on the home page and the first person didn't continue the ring (they had no link to next) and the second webring only contained one other site. Pretty disappointing introduction to something I "need".

Which site has no next button? I think some of them hide them put them in menus!

Re: You need a webring

#50

Post by whynotisay »

antonvs wrote: post #40
whynotisay wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think more like "boxing ring" in that everything inside the circle is "in the ring". The weird one is actually "rink" as in "skating rink" – because it derives from the word for "line". So what you're talking about might actually be called a "web rink" if it existed, in that links flow in a linear fashion.

No, the original webrings from 1995 were literally rings - each site linked to one other site in the ring, and eventually one of them would link back to the “first” site, making an actual ring.

Nope. There was no "first" site as you say - it was literally just a list of links.

The most innovative ones were iframes of a single source of links (iframes were all the rage, unless of course you clicked "no frames" as a user, because your internet was so slow).

But even the less formal ones simply listed links to other sites, there was no visit order, and definitely was not directional/circular.

It's "ring" like a boxing ring - as in "those within the ring" not a directional loop like you mention.

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