@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.
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.
Old StumbleUpon was everything to me
Wow i got hit right in the nostalgies thinking about StumbleUpon
Stumbleupon was great. I remember having a browser plug in for it. Then I stopped using it for a little while and never went back to it.
Does it still exist?
Nope. Died like Digg and a bunch of others. There's a run down here (which I only quickly skimmed): https://productmint.com/what-happened-to-stumbleupon/
@bobdobberson @mrpalmer16 omg YES stumbleupon was incredible! I've asked around if people remember this and it seems that not a ton of people were on there.
I love this idea, the back button on browsers feels like it exists because of webrings
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
Just block JavaScript
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.
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.
Gonna add my voice to those calling for a foss stumbleupon
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.
Kagi is also experimenting with small web
Man I wanna like Kagi but I keep reading batshit things from its founder
Be like him, but don't copy the batshit.
Man what a trip, felt like I was hopping around the old web again.
This is like the old StumbleUpon! Thanks for this!
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.
What about https://webri.ng ?
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:
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.
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?
Oh, man!! This looks so much like one of my old blogs!!! The layout, the colors! Brings back great memories.
There is also Gemini protocol!
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?
I'm down.
You gotta be down to know whats up.
Stumbleupon was fun.
I miss old web shit.
Ninety zeros dot com was one of the Internet's weirdest best things.
This is a great idea. I didn't see a Linux subway yet, but the process for requesting new lines seems pretty simple.
What would be really cool would be an open source, federated version of DMOZ
Maia Arson Crimew, one of my favorite hackers, is in a webring https://maia.crimew.gay
Oh man that site looks just like the internet before it started to suck.
This is so cool!
hexbear's trans comm just hooked into one! super cool
Couldn't agree more
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?
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
All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!
Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.