Given how worried everyone is about the AI slopocalypse where the internet is drowned in LLM-generated junk content maybe it's time for a resurgence of human curated directories like this one.
Because you don't find them visually interesting or because of their content?
There's a whole world of modern unindexed handcoded html + light js sites that really hearken back to the mid-90s web, and they're often part of webrings.
Yeah I have indexed a lot of em. I'm specifically talking about the ones that try to resemble the archetypal personal geocities site with tiled backgrounds, gifs, and whatnot. I've found that these predominantly were created as part of a web fad and were quickly abandoned.
I am all for handcoded html, SSGs, and minimal-to-no js.
I still enjoy those, because they're very true to the era. How many of us learned html by viewing source and copying bits from the sites we liked with no clearer vision than "I want that on my site, too!"?
To me, _any_ non-commercial human expression on the web is heartening, even if it lacks authenticity or taste. We've all been ruled by the effects of overreach of adtech for far too long.
I'm part of one and I don't think it really promotes discoverability. What could work would be some kind of search engine restricted to said webring to make a button to list similar articles. At least I would click on such a button!
I joined a web ring last year, but I'm uncertain about it. Modern web rings tend to automate updates to the next/prev buttons, so I'm never sure what I'm linking to. The web ring owner acts as curator, but I don't know how much effort they put in to keep slop or other undesirable content out.
Not really. Awesome lists are mostly curated by an individual, the bar for making it on that list isn’t the same as HN where the community decides the popularity of the entries
I'd like to argue that Wikipedia also tries to be comprehensive within the limits of relevant topics. And overall, Wikipedia still seems to be going strong.
I'd argue that Wikipedia and its 'sister' projects have accidentally cannibalized a sizeable fraction of the former 'non-commercial, non-business focused' Internet of the 1990s and early 2000s. If you're providing information in a way that's not intended to further some sort of profit motive, it makes sense to work within that large established project because that maximizes the resulting exposure. The rise of LLMs only makes this starker, every LLM is trained from Wikipedia.
> Wikipedia [..] have [..] cannibalized a sizeable fraction of the former 'non-commercial, non-business focused' Internet of the 1990s and early 2000s
Interesting take. Do you mean Wikipedia has cannibalized the traffic to these web sites or do you mean that Wikipedia lead to these web sites going offline altogether?
There is no ai in the content, in fact it's probably the best finance blog in Europe - the ai likely used it to be trained on. Cover images probably yes but they use their own characters. Anyways, cover images are not what you're there for. Content is absolutely top notch.