6 ms·

Incredible that we are regressing back to webrings and hand-curated lists like this, both of which I remember well. That's not a criticism! I guess that the qua

Incredible that we are regressing back to webrings and hand-curated lists like this, both of which I remember well. That's not a criticism! I guess that the quality-drop in search wasn't quite enough to make it happen, but the advent of AI content predomination will be.

deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
nate 6mo ago
Similarly, I feel like book publishers are about to become a thriving business soon again. With any book being most likely just a bot creation, trusting "Random House" sounds like a thing more of us will start paying attention to to make sure we're buying a human made thing.
- RobotToaster 6mo ago
  That's assuming publishers don't decide to replace all their authors with AI.
avanwyk 6mo ago
I wouldn't even call this a regression. Hand curated and edited feels like the future I want right now.
coldpie 6mo ago
> Incredible that we are regressing back to webrings and hand-curated lists like this One of these hand-curated blog aggregator websites pops up on HN about every month. They're cool and good on the author for trying to solve the problem, but it seems like the wrong approach to me. They're too disorganized, a random collection of mostly tech- and politics-related writing from random people with zero way to vet the quality of the writing. They also require the creator/owner to care about the project for the long-term, which is unlikely. I never revisit the aggregators. I wonder if webrings are a better fix here. The low-tech version could be to put a static-URL page on my blog that links to other blogs I like, with a short description. Then people who find my blog interesting might also enjoy the blogs that I enjoy. That could be powerful if it caught on widely. Maybe a clever person could come up with some kind of higher-tech version that could present a more interesting & consistent interface to users, encourage blogs to link back to each other, and also solve the dead-link problem.
- Wojtkie 6mo ago
  Couldn't you technically crawl all these blogs for their "blog's I'm reading" and create a social graph? You could start vetting based on how often other blogs link to that one, sort of like an impact factor in research.
  - travisjungroth 6mo ago
    That sounds like PageRank, Google’s original algorithm.
  - cosmicgadget 6mo ago
    I think Marginalia does bidirectional link analysis if that helps.
  - 8organicbits 6mo ago
    I've been doing this. Here's an example page: https://alexsci.com/rss-blogroll-network/discover/feed-41e7afd377ae70efdb4606c0d0603e6f/ https://alexsci.com/rss-blogroll-network/discover/feed-41e7a... I don't like counting the number of subscribers, that ends up surfacing things like major news websites, or the hacker news feed. But I've found the graph to be useful in finding recommendations.
- RobotToaster 6mo ago
  I'm honestly not sure what these do that federated link aggregators like lemmy/mbin/piefed don't already do.
  - glenstein 6mo ago
    It's a good question, and I think worth trying to answer. I think the key thing is that discovery is derived from a curated index rather than social link posting and voting, and the darwinian race to the bottom/popularity/campaigning that drives link aggregators is replaced by a more deliberate human curation with all of its good and bad. You find new things, you feel a slower pace, but maybe get bored more frequently too.
- 6mo ago
renegat0x0 6mo ago
I follow awesome lists. These are curated lists of software. It reverts google indexing, because search is awful. About personal blogs... I have many many personal blogs in my repository. Around 4k. Respository below. The real problem is to find quality stuff. You can have millions of them, but if they are not worth my time, then what is the point? I cannot verify and decide what is good manually. Obviously. I think we cannot also rely on Google to provide rating, nor any corporation. So I have my own ratings, because at least I will be able to find what I found worth before. Link to my repo: https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database
blackbrokkoli 6mo ago
Do you have any idea what killed webrings? It seems to be simply a great idea...like...should we bring it back? Could we?
- Mezzie 6mo ago
  Search. There was some overlap between the webring age and the early search age, but once search became entrenched and useful, webrings faded. Blogrolls survived for a little bit longer, but it was search. Specifically, once search became the way you found the first page/site to begin with. Before search as default, you found sites in a bunch of scattershot ways: advertisements, word of mouth, lists in books, or lists on websites that updated periodically (that you had to have found/heard about one of the other ways) for example. Then you crawled out from there because that was the only way to find things. You had to either know the URL or use a link. And not all of the links/sites in the webrings were good. Once search got good enough, people found the initial site via search and instead of taking their time clicking through a webring which might at any point lead them somewhere dead or useless, it was quicker to go back to the search page to find something else. Page access went from being a chained together web of back and forth links to a 2 step process of search -> page.
- manuelmoreale 6mo ago
  Webrings are very much still a thing and Ray has an awesome page on his site all about them https://brisray.com/utils/webrings.htm https://brisray.com/utils/webrings.htm
voxleone 6mo ago
We're heading to a future where (when) friction is a luxury. Anyways, I thank the organizers for the rare opportunity. Long live Blogosphere.app, long live blogs.
sailfast 6mo ago
I love the idea of returning to this to be honest. What was missing was the big awesome list of RSS feeds haha. This is actually a great idea. The key is to actually continue to do this and not gatekeep and charge money for promoted crap and add algorithms once it seems profitable to do so. If that happens we’re just recreating the wheel!
- manuelmoreale 6mo ago
  If what you're missing is the big list of RSS I have something for you: https://blogroll.org/all.opml https://blogroll.org/all.opml This will automatically download the OPML file for all the blogs that have an RSS address filed on blogroll.org There's a bit of everything in there but if what you want is a wild ride maybe you can give that a try.
sehgalmayank001 6mo ago
Webrings didn't fail because the idea was bad. They got buried under SEO and social feeds. Now that both of those are broken, hand curation starts to look less like a step backward and more like the only thing that was ever actually working.
DANmode 6mo ago
Regression implies a negative direction. We had exactly what we needed, and we ignored it.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

nate 6mo ago

Similarly, I feel like book publishers are about to become a thriving business soon again. With any book being most likely just a bot creation, trusting "Random House" sounds like a thing more of us will start paying attention to to make sure we're buying a human made thing.

RobotToaster 6mo ago
That's assuming publishers don't decide to replace all their authors with AI.

avanwyk 6mo ago

I wouldn't even call this a regression. Hand curated and edited feels like the future I want right now.

coldpie 6mo ago

> Incredible that we are regressing back to webrings and hand-curated lists like this One of these hand-curated blog aggregator websites pops up on HN about every month. They're cool and good on the author for trying to solve the problem, but it seems like the wrong approach to me. They're too disorganized, a random collection of mostly tech- and politics-related writing from random people with zero way to vet the quality of the writing. They also require the creator/owner to care about the project for the long-term, which is unlikely. I never revisit the aggregators. I wonder if webrings are a better fix here. The low-tech version could be to put a static-URL page on my blog that links to other blogs I like, with a short description. Then people who find my blog interesting might also enjoy the blogs that I enjoy. That could be powerful if it caught on widely. Maybe a clever person could come up with some kind of higher-tech version that could present a more interesting & consistent interface to users, encourage blogs to link back to each other, and also solve the dead-link problem.

Wojtkie 6mo ago
Couldn't you technically crawl all these blogs for their "blog's I'm reading" and create a social graph? You could start vetting based on how often other blogs link to that one, sort of like an impact factor in research.
- travisjungroth 6mo ago
  That sounds like PageRank, Google’s original algorithm.
- cosmicgadget 6mo ago
  I think Marginalia does bidirectional link analysis if that helps.
- 8organicbits 6mo ago
  I've been doing this. Here's an example page: https://alexsci.com/rss-blogroll-network/discover/feed-41e7afd377ae70efdb4606c0d0603e6f/ https://alexsci.com/rss-blogroll-network/discover/feed-41e7a... I don't like counting the number of subscribers, that ends up surfacing things like major news websites, or the hacker news feed. But I've found the graph to be useful in finding recommendations.
RobotToaster 6mo ago
I'm honestly not sure what these do that federated link aggregators like lemmy/mbin/piefed don't already do.
- glenstein 6mo ago
  It's a good question, and I think worth trying to answer. I think the key thing is that discovery is derived from a curated index rather than social link posting and voting, and the darwinian race to the bottom/popularity/campaigning that drives link aggregators is replaced by a more deliberate human curation with all of its good and bad. You find new things, you feel a slower pace, but maybe get bored more frequently too.
6mo ago

renegat0x0 6mo ago

I follow awesome lists. These are curated lists of software. It reverts google indexing, because search is awful. About personal blogs... I have many many personal blogs in my repository. Around 4k. Respository below. The real problem is to find quality stuff. You can have millions of them, but if they are not worth my time, then what is the point? I cannot verify and decide what is good manually. Obviously. I think we cannot also rely on Google to provide rating, nor any corporation. So I have my own ratings, because at least I will be able to find what I found worth before. Link to my repo: https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database

blackbrokkoli 6mo ago

Do you have any idea what killed webrings? It seems to be simply a great idea...like...should we bring it back? Could we?

Mezzie 6mo ago
Search. There was some overlap between the webring age and the early search age, but once search became entrenched and useful, webrings faded. Blogrolls survived for a little bit longer, but it was search. Specifically, once search became the way you found the first page/site to begin with. Before search as default, you found sites in a bunch of scattershot ways: advertisements, word of mouth, lists in books, or lists on websites that updated periodically (that you had to have found/heard about one of the other ways) for example. Then you crawled out from there because that was the only way to find things. You had to either know the URL or use a link. And not all of the links/sites in the webrings were good. Once search got good enough, people found the initial site via search and instead of taking their time clicking through a webring which might at any point lead them somewhere dead or useless, it was quicker to go back to the search page to find something else. Page access went from being a chained together web of back and forth links to a 2 step process of search -> page.
manuelmoreale 6mo ago
Webrings are very much still a thing and Ray has an awesome page on his site all about them https://brisray.com/utils/webrings.htm https://brisray.com/utils/webrings.htm

voxleone 6mo ago

We're heading to a future where (when) friction is a luxury. Anyways, I thank the organizers for the rare opportunity. Long live Blogosphere.app, long live blogs.

sailfast 6mo ago

I love the idea of returning to this to be honest. What was missing was the big awesome list of RSS feeds haha. This is actually a great idea. The key is to actually continue to do this and not gatekeep and charge money for promoted crap and add algorithms once it seems profitable to do so. If that happens we’re just recreating the wheel!

manuelmoreale 6mo ago
If what you're missing is the big list of RSS I have something for you: https://blogroll.org/all.opml https://blogroll.org/all.opml This will automatically download the OPML file for all the blogs that have an RSS address filed on blogroll.org There's a bit of everything in there but if what you want is a wild ride maybe you can give that a try.

sehgalmayank001 6mo ago

Webrings didn't fail because the idea was bad. They got buried under SEO and social feeds. Now that both of those are broken, hand curation starts to look less like a step backward and more like the only thing that was ever actually working.

DANmode 6mo ago

Regression implies a negative direction. We had exactly what we needed, and we ignored it.