4 ms·

A few years ago a few links on HN talked about "the small web", webrings, and drove me to a trove of amazing original little websites exploring the possibilitie

by mlok 5y ago

A few years ago a few links on HN talked about "the small web", webrings, and drove me to a trove of amazing original little websites exploring the possibilities offered by the web 1.0 mostly. Just like back in the days. And some of them were real pieces of art. I never managed to find them again. For example I remember a website that told a story in the form of a calendar you gad to scroll down, it found it so creative that I felt the same amazement as my first steps with the web in '95.

mlok 5y ago
This was my latest comment on HN, when, 5 days later, I stumbled upon this comment at the top of a random dicussion, and it was exactly that calendar story I was looking for all these years. So here it is for reference, if anyone happen to be interested : HN comment : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29071855 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29071855 calendar story : https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football
mlok 5y ago
Maybe the web 1.0 was for exploring ? Maybe the web 2.0 changed that ?
- stevenicr 5y ago
  I thought web 2.0 was supposed to be easier sharing, I'd say it was what, web 2.5 (?) where many started raising the drawbridges and closing off the wall gardens; making it harder to explore / share. google, fbook, even insta, and I'm sure others purposefully making it harder for the little sites to be discovered, kind of the opposite of what web 2.0 was supposed to bring.
stevenicr 5y ago
Indeed, webrings and 'blogrolls' were awesome - a great way to share the web. Then google came in and started penalizing web sites for outbound links. Then everyone stopped the blogrolls and the webrings disappeared - and people even got stingy with linking to a site in a blog post. Sure, blame 'shady seo' or what have you - and yeah that became a thing, but the real blame is google. Pushing sites down google was such a scary thing that wordpress took the previously-in-core linkroll out in future updates - even if you have a blogroll with just friends - it was removed - many did not know - and if you did, you had to go install a plugin to bring the functionality back. Of course the better options would of been to just auto-nofollow tag all the blogroll links - share the web and not to worry about a google penalty or being associated with 'spooky sounds "bad nieghborhood" in google's alog-eyes' I'd love to see web rings brought back with auto-nofollow added - and a stats system that was open to all who installed / used it for webring X Y or Z - and blogrolls that are easy to nofollow.. better with hover preview / a note about why you love site Y or what have you. It would be better for the web, but it's not easy to do currently and not a big benefit for the work right now. Anyone remember when the search engines had a web ring to try the search at other engines at the bottom?
- unraveller 5y ago
  Web Mentions are kind of a replacement for webrings. The problem with web mentions is that it takes one or two manual steps and might as well be link-only comments. Google are practically unqualified to separate genuine content from spam. What's their reason to serve users who can be endlessly contented with externally recommended content? That's effectively ad-blocking at the mental level to them. If we could invent some ubiquitous on-page discovery mechanism we'd have big tech over a barrel.

by mlok 5y ago

mlok 5y ago

This was my latest comment on HN, when, 5 days later, I stumbled upon this comment at the top of a random dicussion, and it was exactly that calendar story I was looking for all these years. So here it is for reference, if anyone happen to be interested : HN comment : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29071855 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29071855 calendar story : https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football

mlok 5y ago

Maybe the web 1.0 was for exploring ? Maybe the web 2.0 changed that ?

stevenicr 5y ago
I thought web 2.0 was supposed to be easier sharing, I'd say it was what, web 2.5 (?) where many started raising the drawbridges and closing off the wall gardens; making it harder to explore / share. google, fbook, even insta, and I'm sure others purposefully making it harder for the little sites to be discovered, kind of the opposite of what web 2.0 was supposed to bring.

stevenicr 5y ago

Indeed, webrings and 'blogrolls' were awesome - a great way to share the web. Then google came in and started penalizing web sites for outbound links. Then everyone stopped the blogrolls and the webrings disappeared - and people even got stingy with linking to a site in a blog post. Sure, blame 'shady seo' or what have you - and yeah that became a thing, but the real blame is google. Pushing sites down google was such a scary thing that wordpress took the previously-in-core linkroll out in future updates - even if you have a blogroll with just friends - it was removed - many did not know - and if you did, you had to go install a plugin to bring the functionality back. Of course the better options would of been to just auto-nofollow tag all the blogroll links - share the web and not to worry about a google penalty or being associated with 'spooky sounds "bad nieghborhood" in google's alog-eyes' I'd love to see web rings brought back with auto-nofollow added - and a stats system that was open to all who installed / used it for webring X Y or Z - and blogrolls that are easy to nofollow.. better with hover preview / a note about why you love site Y or what have you. It would be better for the web, but it's not easy to do currently and not a big benefit for the work right now. Anyone remember when the search engines had a web ring to try the search at other engines at the bottom?

unraveller 5y ago
Web Mentions are kind of a replacement for webrings. The problem with web mentions is that it takes one or two manual steps and might as well be link-only comments. Google are practically unqualified to separate genuine content from spam. What's their reason to serve users who can be endlessly contented with externally recommended content? That's effectively ad-blocking at the mental level to them. If we could invent some ubiquitous on-page discovery mechanism we'd have big tech over a barrel.