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Bring Back Webrings
- jeromechoo 3y agoI 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?
- nottorp 3y agoDo I misremember when I think that every webring footer had a button to take you to the admin's page? Which may or may not have included a list of sites or at least a random jump button?
- estambar 3y agoThis 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
- anemoknee 3y agoWeb rung?
- fuzztester 3y agoNice. Let's see ... I sprung from rung to rung Skipping past the dung On my wall let it be hung That my feats remain unsung
- gerikson 3y agoJust rebrand them as WebDAGs.
- estambar 3y agoI 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 :)
- appplication 3y agoThis could be pretty basic browser extension. A little banner at the top or bottom: “websites like this one”
- scottyah 3y agoOr website curators all agree on a /webring.txt file (similar to a robots.txt) where they list websites they think are similar?
- JohnFen 3y agoAn important part of what made webrings good, though, was that they were curated (some more than others, but still...) Having sites just list others the site owners think are similar is just the site providing a list of links to "friend sites" -- which also used to be a common thing. That's also fun and useful, but not what webrings are about.
- joemi 3y agoI'm not sure I see the difference in curation between a webring and a "other cool sites" list, except that in the webring case there needs to be a central curator across several sites, so it's effectively just a single person's "other cool sites" list spread across several sites. "Other cool sites" lists were quite popular back then. That's what I used for site discovery instead of webrings.
- JohnFen 3y agoThe best webrings were curated by topic rather than just being a list of sites the ringmaster likes.
- bsuvc 3y agoIt should be possible to periodicallt crawl the ring participants and exclude them if they don't have the footer, right?
- 6510 3y agoCould 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.
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoBut definitely only remove them for powers of two days, because... geek cred.
- 6510 3y agoI use it for rss feeds, it really follows how likely it is for a feed to return. Checking every day was slowing things down.
- JohnFen 3y agoYes, good webrings always needed an active ringmaster. I do think webrings are badly needed again, though, to serve the same purpose they were developed for in the first place: discoverability. It's become very difficult to find the good (according to my tastes) websites these days.
- fuzztester 3y agoSame here. Very difficult.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wrycoder 3y agohttps://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/openring https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/openring
- mattw2121 3y agoHonestly what I really want is the return of DMOZ. A curated, categorized list of the best sites.
- doublerabbit 3y agoSure.. with todays net, you'll end up with 100's of frameworks to implement the ring, probably based on the block-chain tech. Then don't forget the WRaaS, webrings as a service, paid subscription, NFTs, sponsored webrings followed by AI Web Rings. And maybe a bag of onion rings to go with it.
- smetj 3y agoAwesome! I couldn't agree more! Thank you.
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoRelated last week: Ask HN: Why is there no effort to bring back webrings? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38177128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38177128 And this thread with some 'rings and related threads listed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37577861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37577861
- dragontamer 3y agoI'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? Here's another idea: you put up links regularly to a webpage that dynamically sorts them by popularity, relevance, and date. Oh wait, that's Reddit.
- JohnFen 3y ago> 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.
- dragontamer 3y agoThe US Military was still doing horse cavalry charges during WW2 in the Philippines even as battleships, carriers, and tanks charged forth. 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. ---------- If you want to rebuild the feeling of early community-driven internet, then you should be looking up IndieWeb (https://indieweb.org/ https://indieweb.org/), and not just trying to resurrect random technologies from 30 years ago.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y agoPeople who are arguing for webrings are not claiming they're easier. It turns out, if easy is your only metric, Everest would never have been climbed.
- 3y ago
- poulsbohemian 3y agoMy 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 expressing themselves online with their own flavors before the "platformization" came along. Post-Covid there appears to be a resurgence in community, in "authenticity" so logically it follows that our online engagement might follow a similar pattern.
- actionfromafar 3y agoYeah, can't wait to monetize that! Oh, darn...
- poulsbohemian 3y agoI mean, your skepticism isn't wrong as it's a definite catch-22... people want tools to share and create their own content, but those tools cost money which means someone has to get paid, at which point the vendors start thinking in terms of greater lock-in and embrace-and-extend opportunities, and the cycle repeats itself.
- shiroiuma 3y agoThis was supposed to be the promise of open-source software: people making tools to share with everyone for free, so people don't need to pay vendors just to do something simple. However, while software can be made free and open-source, someone still has to pay for servers to run for any of this stuff to work. These things were easier back in the good ol' days when everyone just used university computer resources. Nowadays, university tuition has skyrocketed, while universities are no longer freely hosting internet resources like before, I guess because they need to pay their deans millions and build really fancy new dorms.
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoI 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.
- walterbell 3y agoPublish a post listing such sites, with a page title of "Web 1.0 Webring", accepting pull requests for additions? If/when it grows too big, someone can add software for collaborative maintenance. Starting point: https://old.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/caezeo/web_10_era_websites_which_are_still_maintained/ https://old.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/caezeo/web_10_era_w...
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoI 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]."
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoWhat term would you use to differentiate?
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoDifferentiate what?
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoBetween types or classes or generations of websites I’m suggesting that we link all websites that exist in a unnamed class that includes the attributes of websites published prior to 2003 (as an example criteria based on when wordpress launched). What would you name such a class other than Web 1.0 or old web or some such
- ThinkBeat 3y agoIt 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/ https://search.marginalia.nu/ It is a pretty great way to find smaller and more personal websites.
- walterbell 3y agoMarginalia has a URL parameter (&profile=vintage) for Web 1.0, https://search.marginalia.nu/search?query=hacker&profile=vintage https://search.marginalia.nu/search?query=hacker&profile=vin...
- sethammons 3y agoThat put a smile on my face; thanks for sharing. #nostalgia
- LAC-Tech 3y agoTangential, 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 just be a list of sites to check out the author put there. Maybe that's a bit more robust than a ring.
- flyinghamster 3y agoThe algorithms are probably trying to fight spam, but the end result is a closed, self-referential silo.
- stvltvs 3y agoThat's a charitable take.
- LAC-Tech 3y agoI assume they're just trying to keep you on their domain for commercial reasons.
- smcin 3y agoLinkedIn in some cases imposes penalties for outbound links [0]. Consider that LinkedIn has been trying to establish(/convert) itself in part as a blogging platform, and keeps trying to show you other users' blog posts, unsolicited. But not links to Twitter/X, Substack, Rumble, external blogs etc etc. Even though many LI users' blog-type posts are low-grade, it's near-impossible to get them successfully flagged as spam or self-promotional. Every time LI serve you a link to some other content on-site, and suppress serving you an outbound link (even if it was higher-quality), it presumably increases engagement on LI. [0]: https://www.linkedin.com/advice/0/how-do-you-avoid-recover-from-link-penalties https://www.linkedin.com/advice/0/how-do-you-avoid-recover-f...
- everdrive 3y agoWebrings 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 friends only know about those mountains of trash. (instagram, tiktok, youtube, etc.)
- gnutrino 3y ago"critical ignoring" love this term
- b33j0r 3y agoI 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! ;)
- dang 3y agoRelated. Others? Why there is no effort to bring webrings back as search quality has declined? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38177128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38177128 - Nov 2023 (12 comments) Webring Technology - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37577861 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36630750 - July 2023 (3 comments) Webring History - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34846719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34846719 - Feb 2023 (12 comments) What ever happened to webrings? (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33585201 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33585201 - Nov 2022 (111 comments) Homebrew Computers Web-Ring - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32033833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32033833 - July 2022 (11 comments) HomeBrew Computers Web-Ring - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29272595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29272595 - Nov 2021 (14 comments) Mischa's Cursed Webring - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26358952 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 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23549471 - June 2020 (89 comments) Bringing Webrings Back from the 90s - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19683896 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17618082 - July 2018 (4 comments)
- carabiner 3y agoAll nostalgia is a longing for youth.
- joemi 3y agoI always found plenty of interesting websites without needing to use webrings, often from sites with a list of "other sites about [whatever this site is about]" or just "other cool websites". Such personally curated lists were far more useful to me. They were less random, they could show the title, they could even put notes about the sites, I could skip over ones that I already knew about or didn't seem relevant, and they were overall less random. Also, a huge plus for implementation side of it was that it didn't rely on anyone else except you. Are there any advantages to having webrings instead of just lists of "other cool sites"? edit to add: Now that I'm thinking of it, a webring is a ring (duh), but the "other cool sites" concept is a decentralized network. That to me is a huge benefit. Makes it far more robust.
- lakomen 3y agoIn order to "bring back webrings", one would first have to "bring back private websites", private as in not corporate owned, and not being a walled garden, like all the Meta services or X or Discord or Slack or or or.
- sethammons 3y agoI was thinking a webring like solution would allow discoverability while still owning your platform. Discoverability is a major concern I've heard from many bloggists. You could have a footer that is some simple js that allows you to go to a sampling of related articles. Could track cross-domain referrals and give them a cut of generated ad revenue (not sure how you'd track that just yet). To keep some of the riffraff out, you can charge a small fee to join the webring. Have the rings be able to manage their members to facilitate the removal of junk links. Might make a nice small saas; though I'm not sure what the price point would be to make sense. Each ring priced as low as a $1/mo? $5/yr? Maybe a popular ring is worth $1000/mo.
- nottorp 3y agoOne of the appeals of webrings is they used to link sites made by people passionate about a subject. If you link "content creators" they'll have no value to the reader.
- confd 3y agoThese sort of blog posts are becoming increasingly unsettling to me.
- recursivedoubts 3y agohttps://htmx.org/webring https://htmx.org/webring
- autoexec 3y agoI suspect that if there were a significant return to webrings we'd run into very similar problems. Shitty companies would pay to insert their garbage into popular webrings run by other people, and/or they'd start their own webrings and fill them with spam.
- 6510 3y agoLinks could have the webring in the query string so that the pages can put a sticky navbar at the top of the viewport.(edit: could put #webring behind the link, give the navbar id="webring" then style it to stick to the top with #webring:target{}) you could link to: webring.com?site=my-page.com&nav=next then visitors end up at yourpage.com?webring=my-page.com or yourpage.com#webring If you want it to work without a domain you could also have many next and previous buttons. <<<<<<<< webring >>>>>>>
- sekou 3y agoActivityPub potentially helps to solve this. With enough well-exposed/accessible connections to sites or posts you might be able to traverse around a network and collect similar items. There are a lot of other challenges there but it's a possibility.
- brisray 3y agoEveryone has made some good points about webrings and other methods of getting personal websites noticed. Webrings should have a place - they were great for bringing similarly themed sites together and were a way of finding smaller, personal sites. The latter is probably more important nowadays than ever. The webring revival isn't doing so well. I write the list at https://brisray.com/web/webring-list.htm https://brisray.com/web/webring-list.htm and I recently visited evey link in every webring listed. For whatever reason, the ringmasters or the site owners, only 20% of them are fully navigable. For most, clicking the next link will eventually lead to a 404 page. These new webrings have other problems, one of which is the member subject range is much wider than that of the orginal webrings so you never know what you'll be looking at next. I list webrings that have at least a back and forward link, to help everyone they really should have both a member list page and a random link. That would go a little way to stop some of the dead ends. Links here, Reddit, Facebook or whatever are not the answer. They are ephemeral while webrings were supposed to be more or less permanent, at least until they were removed from the ring. Clique listings and directory pages aren't that great either. The rate of link rot is phenomenal. Even after just a couple of months the links on my own pages start breaking. Links on pages more than a couple of years old are barely worth clicking on. Personally, I'd like to see webrings make a comeback, but unless they get a grip the new ones are going to wither away because they aren't navigable.
- NikkiA 3y agoI'm honestly starting to find the 'web nostalgia' a little nauseating, I kinda like gemini, but it lacking inline images and other 'modernities' like that take it a little too far back. The web overall will never go back to how it was in whichever era you idolise (for me it was 1992-1994), so it's probably best that we stop wishing it would.
- kdwikzncba 3y agoThe OG distributed index.
- ajxs 3y agoJust in case anyone is interested, I run the https://webri.ng https://webri.ng platform. It's a platform that lets users create their own webrings without any coding required. This might come in handy if anyone here wanted to create a webring of their own. It actually hosts one of the webrings the author lists in their article.