[whynotisay]

Think more like "boxing ring" in that everything inside the circle is "in the ring".

The weird one is actually "rink" as in "skating rink" – because it derives from the word for "line".

So what you're talking about might actually be called a "web rink" if it existed, in that links flow in a linear fashion.

[antonvs]

No, the original webrings from 1995 were literally rings - each site linked to one other site in the ring, and eventually one of them would link back to the “first” site, making an actual ring.

[whynotisay]

Nope. There was no "first" site as you say - it was literally just a list of links.

The most innovative ones were iframes of a single source of links (iframes were all the rage, unless of course you clicked "no frames" as a user, because your internet was so slow).

But even the less formal ones simply listed links to other sites, there was no visit order, and definitely was not directional/circular.

It's "ring" like a boxing ring - as in "those within the ring" not a directional loop like you mention.

[antonvs]

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring :

> To be a part of the webring, each site has a common navigation bar; it contains links to the previous and next sites. By selecting next (or previous) repeatedly, the user will eventually reach the site they started at; this is the origin of the term "webring."

But, it was a fundamentally silly structure for the web, so many sites implemented something beyond the ring structure, which is what you're describing. Technically, those weren't webrings in the above sense.

> It's "ring" like a boxing ring

Nice retcon, but wrong.