Excited ramblings about webrings, of all things.
In other Internet news... I've been getting people excited about webrings! No, really.
See, with corporations messing up continually due to ineptitude—deviantART's Eclipse design et al—there's a push once more towards a decentralised Internet. Roleplaying art communities, like close species ones for example, are moving away from deviantART and to systems like Lorekeeper. The only problem with this is discoverability.
In the before times though, we had a method of discoverability, they were called webrings and I think they're about to make a return too. Those whom I've spoken with about them see their purpose and are considering re-realising them for the modern Internet.
I mean, all you need is a banner, a couple of left/right buttons, and a button to list all the banners. When a page is loaded, a random banner is chosen and users can explore the banners via the interface. If a site hosts the webring, they can have a banner for their own site. Thus, discoverability!
I'm actually a little bit excited about this because I feel like the Internet has been a corporate husk for a long time, now. There've been those searching for the lost soul of the Internet, there's been many things involved with its downfall—including the fall of Firefox—but the thing is? There's a lot of people using this Internet, and if they decide they want change, they can make it happen.
For those who've not seen, Neocities.org is a grand example of the creativity found on the Internet before it became a corporate husk.
I'm just, I don't know, I'm pleased this is happening. Change is happening. People are getting fed up of the way things are and it's a hopeful change. Now if we can just get a good browser to go with it.
