I like the webring idea but I would hope finding the right server would be automated, clicking through thousands of servers sounds exhausting.
this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
28 points (93.8% liked)
Programming
17765 readers
325 users here now
Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!
Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.
Hope you enjoy the instance!
Rules
Rules
- Follow the programming.dev instance rules
- Keep content related to programming in some way
- If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos
Wormhole
Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I like the webring idea
Really? It wasn't even really even popular when it was popular. Search engines quickly became a better way to find things. webrings were always broken.
The details are in the work, but there is consideration for enabling a preference to automatically select the fastest server.
I've also considered making servers announce load reports, telling other servers how much load they are under, that way a server can be selected via both fastest and least under-load.
This might even be an appropriate use for AI (maybe even running in-browser for privacy). I imagine something that reads your prompt and auto-populates a few rings to search. You review and edit the suggested rings, then click search.
But, even in those early days of the 90s, it was known that there was no way for a search engine to be able to index an exponentially increasing amount of data.
And then lots of people did just that for 2 decades.
🤷♂️
no one can index exponential amounts of data, nevermind the predatory SEO and AI.
Google is. The NSA almost undoubtedly is. A bunch of other governments are. AI companies probably are. Meta probably is.
When a user wants to search something up, they first search for a topic in web-rings, and then they select that web-ring.
From a usability perspective, that doesn't feel great. How does a user find the first web ring search engine? What if they don't want that multi step process? How do users avoid predatory web rings that are trying to sell them stuff? How does this compete with existing search?
How does a user find the first web ring search engine?
The implication is that such functionality is bundled into this search engine.
What if they don't want that multi step process?
Hard thing, but what are a few steps toavoiding AI spam results?
How do users avoid predatory web rings that are trying to sell them stuff?
That's a moderation issue, alluded to being a problem that should be figured out separate to figuring out this web-ring federation.
How does this compete with existing search?
Existing on the sidelines and possibly leaching off DDG users who want a less bing dependent search.