Yesterweb webring shutting down

[Necrosia]

[sig]

It seems we've gotten to a point where the Yesterweb is becoming too big for its own good... I'm not saying it's the end of it, but it's definitely a period of transition into the next phase.

[loren]

Its now excessive size makes it easy for one to become lost among a ring of strangers, where it's kind of just popular to join for the sake of joining, rather than some common purpose. [...] It made me realize how many people viewed the webring as a kind of billboard they could add their site to, in order to get it more clicks, without otherwise participating or interacting with the members. I remembered "big" webrings feeling this way back in the day, and that's not something I'm interested in replicating.

i'll admit, this is how i've viewed the yesterweb webring and it's the reason i've never joined it or gotten involved with that community. i really respect the decision to shut it down.

[tarraxahum]

I respect the decision, however it is sad that so many sites I used to find through that webring will be harder to locate or discover. I sure hope that some kind of an archive stays up, even though Sadness's reasons for doubting that optionh are also valid.

Of course hopping from site to site through buttons is also a viable strategy, but not every site will have their button spread on other websites :D

I do have to admit though, Yesterweb grew far too big for their own good. Here's to evolving and knowing when to change direction.

[Guest]

I completely understand the decision, it has to be impossibly hard to manage such a huge ring, and if people started abusing it for SEO and advertisement instead of community building then it had long forfeited its original mission anyway.

Even though the web revival is my main interest and socializing space at this time, I have never really interacted with the Yesterweb side of things in the past. I think it is because they always felt too big to be meaningful (anonymity of scale), and the users on there were either hit or miss because Yesterweb as a community is the main entry point to the subculture for most people. And that includes people who don't quite grok yet what we tryna do here.

What I really appreciate on the web revival is that most people here purposely live a different online culture than the rest of the internet: we like the often lauded long-form communication, are sick of debating and arguing all the time and instead strive toward authentic and respectful interaction, we appreciate retro-inspired postmodernist art, old, obscure and obsolete aesthetics themselves, oppose media and software corporations controlling our interaction, appreciate free software, and so on and so on.

Sometimes it felt like most of the people whose entry into this subculture was through the Yesterweb saw this entire subculture and hobby as an "aesthetic" more than an attitude, bringing their toxic ways of interacting with them because they didn't peek beyond the surface level of "old Windows design is nostalgic".

Still sad to see such an icon go but I completely understand and respect the decision.

[Necrosia]

Sometimes it felt like most of the people whose entry into this subculture was through the Yesterweb saw this entire subculture and hobby as an "aesthetic" more than an attitude, bringing their toxic ways of interacting with them because they didn't peek beyond the surface level of "old Windows design is nostalgic".

This is exactly how I see it!   Not only there but on melon land forum as well, sometimes.

For some people its only a fad and that's okay but its hard to manage the expectation on old members while welcoming new members.

[Inkerlink]

Oh wow, I had never realised the Yesterweb had that many members! That's insane! 
I can understand why it was taken down. I'm curious to see what happens next, whether it's relaunched or restarted by someone else? Maybe it will never come back? Who knows.
The Yesterweb as an idea likely won't die, it's much harder to get rid of an idea then it is the webring itself.
It makes me think of the concept of a webring as a whole. Some may think it's not worth it if the webring is just going to grow too big and be discontinued anyway, but I don't think that's true. The fact it existed at all made it's existence worth it. Nothing lasts forever, and nothing HAS to last forever for it to be worthwhile. Like I said, the idea of the Yesterweb will live on, and other forms of connection will sprout up too. This is just the next step in the journey that is the Yesterweb.

[Cele]

I, too, completely skipped Yesterweb and never applied for any of my websites to be put on there. It just felt too... I guess "important" for me. Since it looks like it's the biggest player on this field, so to speak. (Was debating a lot if Melonland was also too "important" for someone like me, haha.)

I completely agree with people above about the aesthetics thing, although I never experienced the Yesterweb Discord or other place where this attitude from users would've become obvious. I've just noticed it while browsing the Neocities websites directory.

I kind of wish there were more webrings for more specific things. When the topic of the webring is, say, any personal site, there is a danger it could become too big to manage.

My genuine wish is that people would make more websites, and not only personal sites but any kinds of sites they're passionate about (within reason, of course).

[brisray]

I was saddened to read this but can understand it.

Webrings require a commitment and the larger ones tend to implode after a while, they get too much for a person, or even a small team to run. Yesterweb did better than most, many rings, at least of the ones I've tried to join in the last year or so, can't keep half a dozen sites together, let alone the hundreds Yesterweb has.

In the last couple of months, Weird Wide, OpenBooks, NO JS, NweWeb and more have stopped accepting members or have gone completely.

I don't see webrings as some sort of community. They are a way of personal sites helping each other, certainly to get more traffic but not as a method of SEO in the modern sense. Without the rings, new or old, many of the sites wouldn't get many visitors at all, no matter how important or useful the writer's felt what they had to say is.

Sadness's list of webrings is at https://sadgrl.online/cyberspace/webrings
foreverliketh's list is at https://foreverliketh.is/
Mine is at https://brisray.com/web/webring-list.htm

[Cele]

Webrings require a commitment and the larger ones tend to implode after a while, they get too much for a person, or even a small team to run

You mean if the influx of new sites is very high?

Webrings are probably good for discovering new sites when someone uses them to hop from one site to the other. There's no "community" there if the webmasters don't even talk with each other.

In any case, the Yesterweb situation seems kind of heated at the moment...

[fLaMEd]

Makes sense. Eight hundred homepages in the ring is wild. I was in the ring from the start and then forgot about it.

The Yesterweb Ring ending is a good prompt for anyone to create a webring for any particular niche, similar to fanlistings in a way.

A simple ring I’ve been thinking about is one for my own projects. Easy to maintain that way.

[creaturefeature]

looking back a couple months ago, it was probably a good thing I ended up leaving the yesterweb in the end.

I´m not gonna go on the details, but i ended feeling a bit uncomfortable there. I think i´ll stick to smaller spaces where people share my interests thank you very much

[PurpleHello98]

Yeah, I feel like in the past while the Yesterweb has become almost too large. I used to interact on their Discord server every day, but then it just started feeling a little too big, a little too crowded, and I didn't feel comfortable anymore. Spaces like these are better off relatively small, where everyone can feel more at home and where the space feels like it's not lost its point.

[Lyonid]

I feel like the Yesterweb has brought a lot of people into a new mindset when browsing the internet. Their aesthetic and overall presentation brought so many people into this conscious and creative online space to a point where they may find their own way now. It's like a first dip for many, and for that, I respect it so much. I hope sadness and everyone involved can find a way to keep the project and its goal alive to never stop bringing new people in. The bad apples are disheartening yet only logical. I hope sincerely that out of this mostrosity of a webring, many many new groups and webrings emerge - because we really do need them.

[Cobra!]

I hope sadness and everyone involved can find a way to keep the project and its goal alive to never stop bringing new people in.

Yesterweb isn’t going away, they’re just shutting down the web ring. They still have their forums which is pretty active.