this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2024

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385

Let's bring back the webring. (gusbus.space)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

81 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Back in the day the best way to find cool sites when you were on a cool site was to click next in the webring. In this age of ailing search engines and confidently incorrect AI, it is time for the webring to make a comeback.

This person has given his the code to get started: Webring

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 3 months ago (7 children)

@mrpalmer16 one of my favorite things back in the day was the old-school "StumbleUpon" which was like webrings on crack.

Unfortunately, advertising and profit-seeking happened.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Ah man, those times were great. Bored? Just push the button and you'll see something new. No scrolling, just a new website with random interesting stuff to explore.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Old StumbleUpon was everything to me

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

Wow i got hit right in the nostalgies thinking about StumbleUpon

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[+] [email protected] 38 points 3 months ago (3 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago

It will happen out of necessity once LLMs make search engines useless. Bookmarks and human-curated content will be the only way to find stuff.

It's already affecting small businesses worldwide, who aren't being discovered anymore by searches in their local area.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

So would people having webpages instead of social media accounts

And there's your problem... (in the voice of Jamie Hyneman, Mythbusters). To see a real return of webrings, people would need to have (make) their own pages and curate some links.

Thinking about it, with the rise of selfhosted, it's actually really viable, cobble together a docker stack with a WYSIWYG HTML editor somewhat oriented to the task (pretty sure something out there can be repurposed), a web server, proxy, and that's about it (probably missing a fair bit, not my bailiwick, still, once the stack is made and solid, I'm guessing many would host, I would). Set a threshold of how many people you're willing to host, say 50 or whatever so you're able to check for CSAM or other legal minefields, and Bob's your uncle, stir in some solid security to keep it isolated if you're using it at home (or VPS) and it's golden.

OK, more complicated than I initially thought, and it's way less friction to use something like faceplant, which is entirely their point. Still, I think, if given the opportunity, and functional tools, and low enough friction, many would prefer to have a hand curated presence on the web above a facebook page.

I'll stop, but thanks for the interesting thought seed.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (3 children)

There has to be a cultural shift as well. It's not the early 2000s anymore where a substantial portion of internet users could tinker around their desktop computers. I recently got fiber at home and we're locked behind CGNAT. I could look for a solution for myself since I grew up opening ports on my router, but imagine someone who grew up with bubble-wrapped smartphones trying to navigate their way through that bs.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

Website hosting is still a thing. Not everything needs to be self hosted.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You're not wrong, but here we are, talking open source and GPL licences. If you can make a game portal work, or the web in general, it's viable, your ISP is a choke point though, agreed. Was more talking about an easy stack like the 'arrs, but for webrings, just an idea...

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I love this idea, the back button on browsers feels like it exists because of webrings

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (2 children)

It exists because web browsers used to not have tabs. Nowadays it's useless cause with modern scripted web pages you never properly get back to the site you left

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (2 children)

then you're visiting websites that are badly coded

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Just block JavaScript

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (6 children)

Then the entire browser becomes useless. I couldn't even post this comment without JavaScript.

Edit: I wish a search engine that only showed websites without JavaScript existed.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Umatrix is great, you can configure it to automatically allow first party javascript, and if sites still dont work eneable bits until they do them lock those settings so the same bits will be enabled next time you're on that site.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

I wish also that THAT search engine also made it so turning on results that have paywalls is a thing you can only have turned on if YOU turn it on

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Gonna add my voice to those calling for a foss stumbleupon

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yeah! StumbleUpon was cool. Something about how it tried to engender serendipity.

Such a pity that so many other good recommendation engines died or succumbed to enshittification.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Kagi is also experimenting with small web

https://kagi.com/smallweb/

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Man I wanna like Kagi but I keep reading batshit things from its founder

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

Man what a trip, felt like I was hopping around the old web again.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

https://d-shoot.net/kagi.html

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

This is like the old StumbleUpon! Thanks for this!

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The idea comes up again and again on the fediverse. It feels ripe for some app/platform to kinda nail it.

I’m not sure this is it or even something that does exactly the old web ring thing. I think a simple enough system for the human curation of web pages in a standardised way that can easily be consumed and aggregated would go a long way though. The fediverse feels like its close to something.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

What about https://webri.ng ?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (6 children)

That seems interesting!

In the end, I'm wondering if all the pieces are here on something like the fediverse but just need to be connected. I haven't thought about this at all until now (so I'm just riffing here) ... but the essence of such a system seems to me:

Recommendations are human curated
Recommendations come from a single human (or well defined collective)
Reccommendations are organised in a navigable structure

Point 3 seems to be the unclear part. A "ring" is obviously a bunch of connections (not unlike a linked list). But other structures probably have a lot to provide here, especially if they're amenable to some basic search facility.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You might be overthinking it, or I might be underthinking it.

When I hear "webring" I think of a simple list of sites, curated by the ring creator. And all members have a badge on their site, complete with a few nav buttons.

It was never broke, why fix it?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Aside from 3 you are essentially creating Stumble Upon.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Oh, man!! This looks so much like one of my old blogs!!! The layout, the colors! Brings back great memories.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (3 children)

There is also Gemini protocol!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I'm aware of it (and while not being super enthused about it, I can my personal interest growing over time as the internet keeps tracking the way it is).

But how does it help with a page recommendation system? Is there a strong culture of that sort of thing on Gemini?

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I'm down.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

You gotta be down to know whats up.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago

Stumbleupon was fun.

I miss old web shit.

Ninety zeros dot com was one of the Internet's weirdest best things.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago

This is a great idea. I didn't see a Linux subway yet, but the process for requesting new lines seems pretty simple.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago

I'm in a few webrings! https://wetnoodle.org they're under the navigation menu towards the bottom

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

This is so cool!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Maia Arson Crimew, one of my favorite hackers, is in a webring https://maia.crimew.gay

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Oh man that site looks just like the internet before it started to suck.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (3 children)

What would be really cool would be an open source, federated version of DMOZ

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Yes, please!

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Neocities does this right?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

hexbear's trans comm just hooked into one! super cool

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Couldn't agree more

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Is the StumbleUpon thing not something Mozilla could do with Pocket?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I can't believe anyone did this. It's totally random (within pool of participants). There's a reason it went away. Is the equivalent of "I'm feeling lucky" but with a smaller pool. I guess I'd you like random it's fine I guess?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

You didn't have a good experience with it, many of us did have some food experiences with it.

But it made going out on the Internet interesting. Today I'm not sure if its less or more risky to view a sketchy site, is it more risky now with ransom ware, data scraypers, and such.

Ide consider viruses to be less of a risk today, but my results probably vary

My experience was that those webrings often worth checking out if you didnt have something specific you were looking for today.

Its not the same at all, but theres a sense of my experience when i suddenly realize im on wikipedia and have opened 50+ tabs after I've finished what i was reading. Then just going through the tabs you have open

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