[estambar]

This 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

[JohnFen]

Yes, 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]

Same here. Very difficult.

[bsuvc]

It should be possible to periodicallt crawl the ring participants and exclude them if they don't have the footer, right?

[6510]

Could 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]

But definitely only remove them for powers of two days, because... geek cred.

[6510]

I use it for rss feeds, it really follows how likely it is for a feed to return. Checking every day was slowing things down.

[gerikson]

Just rebrand them as WebDAGs.

[brnt]

Last I checked, rings were usually cyclic.

[fuzztester]

And also commutative, if I remember my math right, so you can traverse them in both directions. Punning on the word ring (which is a math concept too, as in groups, rings and fields, and stretching the metaphor too, or is it a mixed metaphor? Heh.

[estambar]

I 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 :)

[phailhaus]

Links between websites in a sort of hyper-dimensional space! A...hyper-link?

[appplication]

This could be pretty basic browser extension. A little banner at the top or bottom: “websites like this one”

[scottyah]

Or website curators all agree on a /webring.txt file (similar to a robots.txt) where they list websites they think are similar?

[JohnFen]

An 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]

I'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.

[kdwikzncba]

Links to friend sites - does this have a name?

As a way of discovering content, I love the idea.

[ShadowBanThis01]

Or... or.... a little banner that says, "From around the Web:"!

[meragrin_]

Directed acyclic graphs?

[anemoknee]

Web rung?

[fuzztester]

Nice.

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