I run the https://webri.ng/ platform, which got a mention in the article. It provides a simple platform for managing your own webrings, without any extra bells and whistles. It's in bad need of a UI overhaul, but otherwise everything is going well!
I don't mind the overall style, but it could use a bit more contrast.
It took me a while to realise those are the actual colors and it wasn't a modal background overlay, half-left over by my adblocker. Big money ruined the open web.
Thank you very much for your kind words! 'Overhaul' might have been too strong a word. I've been considering adjusting the colours a little, but the overall 'minimalist' approach would definitely not change. When I put this design together I took a lot of inspiration from Deviantart's old layout from the early 2000s, the one with the classic 1px borders!
Google scared website owners off of webrings telling they they may get penalties from them and overnight website owners left them. There was a time when you could link to any other website without worry... then too late Google came up with nofollow.
That time is now if you have a personal site and you don’t play the SEO game. I personally just link whatever I find interesting and Google and its ranking can go hug a cactus.
Wait, this must have been just before I entered the industry. What was Google's rationale? Didn't they start out determining popularity by reference count?
Edit: Ooh, I see. Interlinking clusters were considered fraudulent references.
The heyday of webrings lasted from around 2001 until 2017.
I'm not denying it, but I'm really surprised by that. I was heavy into online diaries, e/n, then blogging, and I remember seeing them mostly in the 1997-2001 period. I ran one myself as well, a Ben Folds Five fansite webring :-D Blogrolls seemed to largely replace them after about 2003 or so, at least in my circles.
Yeah, after the early 2000s, especially in 2017, I'm sure 99% of webring usage was either zombie webrings on untouched sites or a small group of revivalists trying to bring them back like the smolweb. Neither seem adequate to extend the "heyday".
Same with those "top sites" websites where you had to beg users to click on the tiny referral banner to vote for your website.
I haven't seen a webring in the wild since the early 2000s except on zombie websites found on Marginalia.
I like the idea of webrings and I'm exploring the possibilities of connecting blogs together. My project, Bhread, is a site that creates threads from blogs. Blog2 can reply to Blog1 by typing `replying to <url of blog1 post>` in the body of the blog post. This allows for a twitter-like experience of blogging.
In comparison to webrings, bhread is for a different use case. Webrings are great for discoverability while bhread is better for conversations. Maybe we can find an overlap here (Webring + bhread = ?). I'm still exploring ideas i.e. groups (subreddit-like blog threads).
The design of bhread always considers decentralization. No important data must be gone from the internet if ever the bhread site dies. Just like a webring.
BTW, I recommend having a separate `/shorts/` page in any personal blog as well for small, tweet-like posts [1].
The website is still very new. I put it on the web for demonstration and testing purposes so if you break it, let me know [2][3]!
[3] I'm still working on the layout of the site so it may be weird on some devices but it should work, it's html css and js (htmx, tailwind, alpine) served by django.
This is the first time I've heard of webmentions although I think I have used it on Wordpress before. I thought it was a proprietary protocol.
Reading this document: https://indieweb.org/Webmention-developer it appears that bhread is a bit simpler than this and as you've mentioned, works on static content. The setup is simpler [1], and there's a homepage for all content. It's probably the only advantage of my project but thanks for bringing this up. I now have a new resource I can get ideas from.
i don't like the tendency that every real-life authority (businnes, org, school, town, community, person) has its own domain. DNS was meant to be hierarchical.
i get it that "it happened to be this way" because of the bad decisions of various web tech (or the absolute lack of coordination between them). but we at least may escape from it. when a person or many of small communities, or often even a town has its own domain name, they usually does not manage it, not even own it. they outsource this heavy IT duty to an IT company. so in reality the IT company controls the domain.
then why IT-competent people today treat example-person.com and example-school.com being controlled by separate authorities while treat example-hosting.com/~person and example-hosting.com/~school by the same? example-person.com and example-school.com are both controlled by the same hosting company.
"because example-hosting.com/~person can set cookies on example-hosting.com/~school" they say. – ok, she should not. hte public suffix list is also the product of bad tech.
That sounds like a morality clause - i.e. they intend to deny access to the software to entities engaged in child labor. Putting aside whether or not 'good' people should deny 'evil' people access to FOSS, and if we can even agree on a consistent set of morals to embed in our licenses[0], the main problem with these licenses is getting courts to correctly interpret them as we intend.
Copyright is a virus that creators can use to harm people who use their creative work, so any ambiguity in licensing at all is a trap that can be sprung at any time to subject users to billion dollar lawsuits. In fact, you already pointed out one. Conversely, any tightly drafted morality clauses is likely going to be easily worked around by exactly the kinds of organizations you want to exclude from use of your software.
To make things even worse, there's this weird trend of postmodern licensing, where you deliberately write licenses that are difficult to interpret[1]. Licenses that only apply to the dead, or extremely vague "software must be used for Good, not Evil, as we interpret it" kinds of morality clauses that I railed against above. If combined with a real license, these are harmless (because you can just take the actually FOSS terms). But standalone, these are all very expensive and dangerous rugpulls waiting to happen.
[0] For example: should Planned Parenthood, the National Rifle Association, and/or the American Civil Liberties Union be allowed to use Ethical Source licensed code?
[1] Stuff like WTFPL could at least be construed as a weirdly drafted permissive license.
I just throw them on the junkheap of non-free licenses and ignore any software that uses it. CNPL, FAFOL, etc are junk licenses as far as I am concerned. Not worth the trouble. There's plenty MIT/BSD/(A)GPL/etc software to use instead.
Ask HN: What Modern Alternatives for WebRings are there? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36630750 - July 2023 (3 comments)
Webring History - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34846719 - Feb 2023 (12 comments)
What ever happened to webrings? (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33585201 - Nov 2022 (111 comments)
Mischa's Cursed Webring - 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 - Feb 2021 (1 comment)
Show HN: I am trying to start a webring for geeks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23549471 - June 2020 (89 comments)
Bringing Webrings Back from the 90s - 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 - July 2018 (4 comments)