Metafilter Webring

December 15, 2021 8:34 AM

Lately I’ve seen people resurrecting the Webring(!)

I was wondering if members would be interested in submitting their websites to such a metafilter webring — it would link to all sorts of nice things that people made?
posted by beesbees to Feature Requests at 8:34 AM (22 comments total)

I am very much this kind of nerd
posted by churl at 1:09 PM on December 15, 2021

What??!! Oh man, I feel like I think about webrings all the time. Was in some dope gURLpages loops back back back in the day. So down for this.
posted by youarenothere at 4:19 PM on December 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

There was a project years ago (that I now cannot find) that started doing brief write-ups of metafilter users' web pages. I have thought about scraping through the websites listed in people's profile pages but was worried that doing this en masse would violate some rule here.
posted by AndrewStephens at 5:11 PM on December 15, 2021

It’s so hard to DO stuff lately. And by lately I mean the last couple years. In which time I have made two whole blog posts. But I keep thinking I want to get going again. This could help!
posted by Glinn at 5:40 PM on December 15, 2021 [2 favorites]

There was a project years ago (that I now cannot find) that started doing brief write-ups of metafilter users' web pages.

Oh hey I was doing that with omiewise and not_on_display. And then around that time, iirc, we decided to tighten up some of the profile page privacy stuff and it seemed like less of an ok thing privacy wise to be combining someone's profile page information with their username on somewhere not Metafilter.com so we wrapped it up.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:40 PM on December 15, 2021 [3 favorites]

My very first blog was hosted by a friend (and MeFite!) who hosted several friends' blogs, all using a blog program he wrote himself. He ultimately made an aggregator of updates on all of the blogs he hosted and then gradually added other friends' blogs hosted everywhere. This was right around the time that Blogspot and Live Journal were both taking off, but the Blogmass was my very first participation in Web 2.0, and still the best.

I have a poorly updated WordPress site for my job and a deserted Dreamwidth site. I love to imagine that I could join such a Webring and love it the way I used to love such things.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:19 AM on December 16, 2021

Very cool. Happy to contribute.
posted by doctornemo at 6:37 AM on December 16, 2021

I would love to be part of this!
posted by iamkimiam at 6:56 AM on December 16, 2021

I'm in!
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:03 AM on December 16, 2021

Count me in too. Maybe I'll get off my lazy duff and actually write a post or two.
posted by kathrynm at 9:33 AM on December 16, 2021

Great! I was thinking this as a metafilter feature of sorts? Haven’t actually thought it through. Was thinking people could sign up for their website to be included from their profile page?

Any suggestions as to how we could go about this are welcome.

I can’t even remember how webrings worked back in the ol’ days… I guess you just added your own site to a static HTML page.
posted by beesbees at 11:10 AM on December 16, 2021

A low-effort solution would just be to have a recurring thread (every 2 months, say) in either MetaTalk or Projects where people could post links to whatever they have been creating (blog posts, art works, even book review on Goodreads) that they are proud of but doesn't meet the criteria for a full Project post.

A no-shame self-linking post.

That way anyone could just opt-in or out on a month by month basis.
posted by AndrewStephens at 7:23 PM on December 16, 2021 [6 favorites]

>I can’t even remember how webrings worked back in the ol’ days…
It's a doubly-linked list: buttons for left or right on the ring, plus some had 'jump to random', so you paste a block of HTML at the bottom of the page to traverse the ring. The content of the block was supplied by the ring curators.

These days you could implant elements pulled from the servers at metafilter.com every time you load the page, and the database of links could live here and be pre-rendered for embedding into HTML, React or other.
posted by k3ninho at 3:36 AM on December 17, 2021

If outside of metafilter, one way to do it would be to host the webring on github and let people sign on/off through pull requests.
Then members could just link to the github webring page instead of embedding iframes or javascript on their own site.
Example of a newer webring.

Alternative would be something hosted on/by metafilter and sign on/off via a profile option.
posted by beesbees at 9:54 AM on December 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

Metafilter just needs to implement OAuth or similar. Then 3rd party sites could have a 'Login via Metafilter' button and get the "yes Metafilter user_id XXXX" confirmation. Then the site could just use its sockpuppet to look at the profile page and grab the url. Parse the HEAD and extract as much metadata as possible and present it to the user with some tickbox like 'join the webring'. There could even be (IIRC my HTML) META tags in the HEAD that gives more specific Metafilter like details (tags, description, etc.) that the webring can use eventually when it goes around and checks whether links are alive or dead or get last modified or whatever. Think it's going to be beans for dinner.
posted by zengargoyle at 9:23 PM on December 17, 2021 [2 favorites]

I've gone to some effort to de-crappify my blog—in terms of appearance at least, no promises about the substance. So I have mixed feelings about adding in a webring footer. On the one hand, hell yes. On the other, perhaps there's a less visually crappy way to do that.

Also, as far as I'm concerned, the fact that I have added my website to my MeFi profile is all the permission someone needs to link my website to my MeFi presence (plus, I'm here using my real name).
posted by adamrice at 1:34 PM on December 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

We gathered a list of Mefi bloggers a few years ago - maybe a new post updating that list and getting specific permission to include in a webring is a place to start?
posted by COD at 7:17 AM on December 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

Ah, those were the days, 20-odd years ago when I'd lose myself for hours down webring rabbit holes of Geocities sites of home-made crafts and Outlook Express custom stationery ...
posted by essexjan at 12:17 PM on December 19, 2021

where people could post links to whatever they have been creating

Reminder - there is a new Mefi Makers (arts and craftsy) group over on Padlet, where you can post the things you are making, and are welcome to include a link to your blog - I do not mean to suggest this as INSTEAD of a lovely webring, but as another thing that is happening.
Here is the current board (the 2nd, which includes on it a post with a link to the first one)
Here is the (most recent) MetaTalk about it.
Please feel most free to go visit whether you are making things or not!
posted by Glinn at 1:08 PM on December 19, 2021

I'm on that padlet, and if there's a webring, sign me up for that too!
posted by cendawanita at 5:34 AM on December 20, 2021

Yes to all the ideas above. Somebody make this happen before my brain forgets that I don't have the free time to be that somebody.
posted by avapoet at 10:14 PM on December 23, 2021

Yeah, unless metafilter wants to implement something that supports this, it seems like a chore to maintain?

Proposal
Here an idea for a metafilter webring-ish feature: Saw this site Special fish and thought that was quite nice. What if you could browse (next, prev, random) through metafilter profile pages? I think that could be fun and then we wouldn’t need to ask permissions, as users decides themselves what to include/exclude on the profile pages.
posted by beesbees at 1:53 PM on January 14, 2022