5 ms·

Webrings were ok, but what I really miss was people just having a page of links to other websites they liked. This was the feature that drove most of my web bro

by aimor 4y ago

Webrings were ok, but what I really miss was people just having a page of links to other websites they liked. This was the feature that drove most of my web browsing. Today the web doesn't feel like a web, it feels like there's a few large social media hubs that point to every other website, and those sites only point one of two places: to themselves or to an Amazon affiliate link. Years ago I remember getting frustrated on some news site because all their hyperlinks just linked to other barely-relevant articles on their website. I didn't understand at the time what they were doing. If you have a personal website, consider adding a page with links to your favorite sites. Search engines just don't capture that type of browsing.

JohnFen 4y ago
So much awesome stuff was lost from those days, and was never replaced.
- LAC-Tech 4y ago
  Don't be a doomer. We have the technology.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    It's not really an issue of technology.
amatecha 4y ago
I do this! I've categorized them, and for many of them I even describe them! http://matecha.net/links/ http://matecha.net/links/ (also note the http, to allow older systems to connect. https also supported of course)
- creamynebula 4y ago
  Thank you! I got interested in using scuttlebutt, I would like to get involved in a social network not used by many; was sad to see that it isn't maintained anymore, so probably not safe.
kristopolous 4y ago
Tor sites do all of this still. I don't advocate for their content but the way they've built things is pretty great. I've described it as "the 1998 web with better cgi scripts". Also search engines like marginalia (https://search.marginalia.nu https://search.marginalia.nu) and teclis (https://teclis.com/ https://teclis.com/) are nice - they essentially filter out pages with advertisements and trackers which is a pretty brilliant way to defeat SEO farms and other low quality content with ulterior motives. To see their effectiveness give it a challenge. Try queries like "how to lose weight" or heck, "lasagna recipe". To demonstrate, I just took the time to make two videos for "lasagna recipe" with the network tab of chrome's inspector window open: google's first result: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntC5ZcgxyD4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntC5ZcgxyD4 teclis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GULoL8o6NDA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GULoL8o6NDA Along with recipe sites, there's recently been a crop of similar looking tech help sites that basically give w3schools level answers with a bunch of rotating ads based on the hypothesis that users will look at the content, then focus on their work for the next hour or two, keeping the tab open because that's just the common pattern while the ad rotations go on the page. As far as serving ads go, programming and recipe sites exhibit similar usage patterns. Similar to recipe sites, the answers you came for are interleaved with ads in the hope that people drag their cursor over the banner ad while selecting text from the site or at least keep that part in the viewport open for the duration of the activity. What a lovely feature! Search has to be driven by axioms of values and purpose because different intents yield different results. There is no silver bullet. For example, google, bing and yandex's goals are pretty antithetical to mine unless I'm actively trying to buy something. On google, I came for a lasagna recipe and someone tried to sell me car parts and a home mortgage which is fine. Those engines are just a poorly chosen tool for that job.
- wan_ala 4y ago
  >Tor sites do all of this still. I like browing onion sites from time to time, typically personal sites. It is resemblant of the wild west days of the web, except most onion sites are for drugs.
  - kristopolous 4y ago
Gigachad 4y ago
The novelty of random blogs and info pages is worn out for people
noyesno 4y ago
Those were called "Blogroll".
- pmlnr 4y ago
  That was the later term, once "blog" became a thing :)
is_true 4y ago
IMO, Google started the decay of the web. People started to think about linking as a way of "losing" Pagerank. Stuffing keywords. And the worst of all, content length. People started writing long articles to keep the Search God happy, most of the times with little added value and a diluted information density, making readers lose time to keep the Gods happy. Then social networks took over and it was even worse. Most people ditched their own sites or never started one, a friend who is a photographer lost his FB/Instagram accounts a couple of days ago and now understands what I was talking about when I told him he should have some content in a domain he controls. Instagram doesn't even allow more than one link.
Jorengarenar 4y ago
At some point I had to create a database: [link redacted]
- rambambram 4y ago
  I really like these lists, especially this long. Since I saw something interesting in the first couple of links/descriptions, I bookmarked it and will go through it soon. For me, this is what the internet was meant for. I'm also collecting interesting links to share publicly on my website(s), in a sort of webring/blogroll kinda way.
rambambram 4y ago
Isn't this called a blogroll, this list of links? In my company's website software, we built a module that combines webrings with blogrolls. We just call it 'shared links'. It's plain simple, because it's the most stupid basic thing one can do with the web: have links to other interesting content. And it's also a curated list of links. Real human recommendations.

by aimor 4y ago

JohnFen 4y ago

So much awesome stuff was lost from those days, and was never replaced.

LAC-Tech 4y ago
Don't be a doomer. We have the technology.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  It's not really an issue of technology.

amatecha 4y ago

I do this! I've categorized them, and for many of them I even describe them! http://matecha.net/links/ http://matecha.net/links/ (also note the http, to allow older systems to connect. https also supported of course)

creamynebula 4y ago
Thank you! I got interested in using scuttlebutt, I would like to get involved in a social network not used by many; was sad to see that it isn't maintained anymore, so probably not safe.

kristopolous 4y ago

Tor sites do all of this still. I don't advocate for their content but the way they've built things is pretty great. I've described it as "the 1998 web with better cgi scripts". Also search engines like marginalia (https://search.marginalia.nu https://search.marginalia.nu) and teclis (https://teclis.com/ https://teclis.com/) are nice - they essentially filter out pages with advertisements and trackers which is a pretty brilliant way to defeat SEO farms and other low quality content with ulterior motives. To see their effectiveness give it a challenge. Try queries like "how to lose weight" or heck, "lasagna recipe". To demonstrate, I just took the time to make two videos for "lasagna recipe" with the network tab of chrome's inspector window open: google's first result: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntC5ZcgxyD4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntC5ZcgxyD4 teclis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GULoL8o6NDA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GULoL8o6NDA Along with recipe sites, there's recently been a crop of similar looking tech help sites that basically give w3schools level answers with a bunch of rotating ads based on the hypothesis that users will look at the content, then focus on their work for the next hour or two, keeping the tab open because that's just the common pattern while the ad rotations go on the page. As far as serving ads go, programming and recipe sites exhibit similar usage patterns. Similar to recipe sites, the answers you came for are interleaved with ads in the hope that people drag their cursor over the banner ad while selecting text from the site or at least keep that part in the viewport open for the duration of the activity. What a lovely feature! Search has to be driven by axioms of values and purpose because different intents yield different results. There is no silver bullet. For example, google, bing and yandex's goals are pretty antithetical to mine unless I'm actively trying to buy something. On google, I came for a lasagna recipe and someone tried to sell me car parts and a home mortgage which is fine. Those engines are just a poorly chosen tool for that job.

wan_ala 4y ago
>Tor sites do all of this still. I like browing onion sites from time to time, typically personal sites. It is resemblant of the wild west days of the web, except most onion sites are for drugs.
- kristopolous 4y ago

Gigachad 4y ago

The novelty of random blogs and info pages is worn out for people

noyesno 4y ago

Those were called "Blogroll".

pmlnr 4y ago
That was the later term, once "blog" became a thing :)

is_true 4y ago

IMO, Google started the decay of the web. People started to think about linking as a way of "losing" Pagerank. Stuffing keywords. And the worst of all, content length. People started writing long articles to keep the Search God happy, most of the times with little added value and a diluted information density, making readers lose time to keep the Gods happy. Then social networks took over and it was even worse. Most people ditched their own sites or never started one, a friend who is a photographer lost his FB/Instagram accounts a couple of days ago and now understands what I was talking about when I told him he should have some content in a domain he controls. Instagram doesn't even allow more than one link.

Jorengarenar 4y ago

At some point I had to create a database: [link redacted]

rambambram 4y ago
I really like these lists, especially this long. Since I saw something interesting in the first couple of links/descriptions, I bookmarked it and will go through it soon. For me, this is what the internet was meant for. I'm also collecting interesting links to share publicly on my website(s), in a sort of webring/blogroll kinda way.

rambambram 4y ago

Isn't this called a blogroll, this list of links? In my company's website software, we built a module that combines webrings with blogrolls. We just call it 'shared links'. It's plain simple, because it's the most stupid basic thing one can do with the web: have links to other interesting content. And it's also a curated list of links. Real human recommendations.