Webring topics: how niche or broad should I go?

[coolio]

hi hi everyone!    It's been a little while.

I've been hard at work on a big project-- basically I'm creating a library of webrings that I built myself and will curate.
I'm doing the whole thing from scratch and it's currently in the testing and bug-squishing phase. ( ) But things are looking really good overall on the backend, YAY!!

My plan initially was to launch my project with 3-4 rings that people could apply to and join, mostly to stress-test my code and make sure everything goes relatively smoothly while I'm getting everything moving.

In creating the rings themselves, I have been focusing on slightly niche topics that I hope are still broad enough to attract people to submit their sites. Right now, the initial lineup will probably be something like:

-Traditional Artists (For people who produce visual art with traditional mediums)
-Fiber Artists (For people who engage in fiber artistry, like crochet, knitting, needlepoint, quilting, sewing, etc...)
-Shrine Makers (Should be self-explanatory! But this might be a good place for fansites too, maybe? What do y'all think?)
-Media Reviews (Basically, for people who write or otherwise create reviews for media on their site-- can be anime/manga/television, music, movies, novels, whatever!)

My worry is that some of these topics may be a bit broad. Perhaps I can go more niche? But in doing so, I am concerned about narrowing the focus of the ring too much.

One of the things I want to do is allow people to discover one another's sites through these rings, and maybe find something new and interesting that's still in their interest, if that makes sense!

I'd love to hear from y'all 

[ValyceNegative]

I feel like modern indieweb webrings have assumed a totally different function compared to what they used to do on the actual oldweb, evolving into something more akin to fanlists or listings. I also think people decide to join depending on how cool their widgets are or how much they fit into a webmaster's aesthetic, that's why a lot of widgets offered are big, interactive, some even have customizable graphics.

Example, I remember seeing classic webrings exclusively on TLK/Biker Mice fansites because those pages only had that content. I also remember it was very rare to find a site pertaining to multiple webrings.
These webrings pertained to a very specific niche and though they were thematically narrow, they were made to be this way.

I think you can go both ways. Your webrings can be either very specific or very broad and you can decide to curate memberships differently wether you want them to behave like "oldweb" or "modern" webrings.

There's no fear in narrowing a topic too much because that's what classic webrings did! However, it's up to you to choose if accepted sites have to be dedicated solely on that topic or be an interest that the webmaster has, regardless of their site's content.

Personal example: I am in a couple of Pokemon webrings because I am indeed a fan, but my Pokemon artwork is relegated to the Fanarts section while the rest of the site is not centered on them. If these webrings behaved like classic ones, I wouldn't have been accepted because my site is not 100% dedicated to Pokemon.