Talk:Webring

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Is there any policy for or against having any Wikipedia belong to Webrings (with the attendant need to have the WebRing "navbar" somewhere on a prominent page)? If OK in principle, are there any technical problems? Robin Patterson 4 July 2005 03:22 (UTC)

The wiki software doesn't allow all html elements, and no javascript, which would make it difficult to place the navbar. For the English wikipedia, I can't see we would gain anything; how many top 60 sites are part of a webring? For the Maori wikipedia (or any other edition with a relatively small number of articles and small traffic), a webring might bring in more users, but I'd suggest you go to the sites on the webring you have in mind first and see if they'll link to it explicitly.-gadfium 4 July 2005 05:26 (UTC)
Having a webring would entail Wikipedia endorsing certain sites, which it is not allowed to do. Wikipedia is not a soapbox. In fact, that page specifically says that Wikipedia can not endorse businesses, which are the entities that run webrings.Superm401 | Talk 11:53, July 12, 2005 (UTC)
Which only supports the conclusion I came to in the Removed POV paragraph section of this discussion page - that the article ought to be deleted. Note that while Wikipedia does have an article for the Webring.com service, it lacks any for Webring's competitors (including Ringsurf and Ringlink), the larger of the two only being barely referred to in passing in an article that carries a name of its primary competitor.
"A similar website is RingSurf.com, which uses the term 'Net Rings'. The site first appeared in the Internet Archive in June 1998."
Literally nothing else is written about any other ring hosting service, unless I have missed something. To mention one company in an industry and barely even acknowledge the existence of its largest competitor (and then only in passing), and not even say that little about any of its other competitors, is certainly a kind of endorsement, an implication that one competitor is worthy of mention and the others aren't, except maybe as brief cites in an article named after and almost entirely written about that one company; in other words, that Ringsurf.com is worth mentioning only as it relates to Webring.com and all the others (Bravenet sitering et al) aren't to be mentioned at all. Further, as I argue below, there really is no hope of making this article even remotely NPOV, owing to the nature of who it is that Webring.com is likely to come into conflict with and the demands of verifiability. The pages of Webring.com users are seldom, if ever, going to be considered "verifiable sources", as prominent sites seldom use that service. 24.14.125.18 12:24, 19 June 2007 (UTC) Justme 24.14.125.18 12:24, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Disambig needed?

This article feels broken to me. Most of it talks about the [WebRing] service, but the beginning section talks about webring as a generic concept. I'd prefer one of the following:

  • Create a new article, "WebRing (service)", move all the WebRing-specific info there, and link to it from here
  • Since "Wikipedia is not a dictionary", rename this article to "WebRing", and streamline the content to pertain mostly to that service (we could still have an "Other webring services" section or the like.

Thoughts? --Rehcsif 20:35, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Hearing no thoughts so far, I've taken a crack at just reorganizing the page to illustrate both concepts. --Rehcsif 17:07, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
In the process of merging in Web ring, I kind of reversed this. It might still make sense to separate out WebRing, but that would leave little about the concept. For now, I suggest we treat them together. I'd like more about generic webrings. If we can add it, it will make sense to extract most of the WebRing-specific material. Superm401 - Talk 07:16, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm still not happy with how this article reads. It starts as a generic description of a webring, then goes on to tell the history of the WebRing(tm) service. The text in the opener talking about WebRing (with that capitalization) referring to a specific service was recently removed. I think we either need to split this article, or do some major reorg. --Rehcsif 21:24, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removed POV paragraph

I removed the following from the article: On September 26 2006, Webring Inc. announced Premium Membership levels, believing they could start charging their users for use of the Webring system. Members would be charged extra based on how many site listings they had and how many webrings they managed. Many members of Webring consider this a ploy from the Webring Administration to "make a huge profit". Webring Inc. already makes a profit from advertising on their websites. In protest many webring members and webring managers abandoned their memberships, deleted their memberships or boycotted Webring Inc. It is estimated that between 70% to 90% of Webring's 500,000+ members are deleting their listings/webrings. There is no news on exact figures on how webrings and sites have been deleted as the result of Webring's recent changes. Since then several new start up sites have appeared and started beta-testing in an effort to create free webring-like services that are advertising supported.

This seems very POV and is uncited, and therefore I believe it does not belong in the article. If someone wants to take a crack at writing a cited paragraph with this info, please be my guest. Otherwise, it falls under WP:NOR. --Rehcsif 19:52, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I added more detail, just using the press release. I don't think it's biased, but some reaction sources might be useful. Superm401 - Talk 07:18, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
The question is, where would one go for a cite on something like that which would not be deemed "unverifiable"? The blowup referred to can be found starting with this post in the Webring managers forum and one can simply look around the Webring directory and note the very large number of rings which are now managed under the webring ids "deleted" or "systemrun", which is the id Webring.com itself uses when it takes over a ring, but aside from that, where is one going to go for an account of the incident other than to the pages of the very individual users whose commentary Wikipedia automatically discounts as being "nonverifiable"? This really becomes an argument for deleting the article altogether, because on these terms the only side othe reader can hear from in any dispute involving Webring.com management is Webring's, and an article written on such terms is so far from being NPOV as to be little more than a press release for a private company, something that is decidedly not encyclopedic. 24.14.125.18 12:07, 19 June 2007 (UTC) Justme 24.14.125.18 12:07, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, but WP's policy is no original research. If this was a significant story, a tech journal or mag, or even the popular press, could pick it up and that would be a fine cite to use. But simply writing a paragraph based on how you see things based on other forum posts, etc, violates {[WP:NOR]]. --Rehcsif 15:43, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
You leave almost anybody reading your last remark with the misleading impression that I wrote the passage in question. Was that your intention? Because I most certainly did not and would not have done so, and don't appreciate being credited with something that I didn't write. One need not take this on faith. The article's history page is up for all to see, and all can see that I didn't write any of the passage, nor have I reverted your edits or made any attempt to reinsert any portion of what you removed back into the article.
I don't dispute the existence of the no original research policy. I do point to the fact that said policy has logical consequences, and sometimes one of those consequences is that in light of the other policies, an article ought to be deleted, not modified, which if you read what I wrote more carefully, you'll find is what I was getting at. I am not arguing for reinsertion of the passage. I'm arguing that since there is no way to provide balance to the article (as per the NPOV policy) without violating the prohibitions regarding the use of nonverifiable sources, that this is an article that needs deletion, not improvement.
This would not be the only reason, either. One need only go to the Webring site, and note that it is a rare ring that sees more than 0.4 hits per member site per day. Ringsurf and Ringlink see even weaker numbers. Compare this to the numbers provided by a banner exchange, a dmoz.org listing, or almost any of the other ways in which sites are seriously promoted these days, and one sees those numbers dwarfed. In looking at the webring/sitering as a topic for a Wikipedia article, one is left with something that provides an inconsequential amount of traffic for a number of obscure sites, and only a small minority of even the obscure sites at that. As others have pointed out, prominent sites are seldom, if ever, found on webrings or siterings. One consequently has an article that talks about an idea from about ten years ago that never really panned out, was quickly eclipsed by more effective ways of increasing the connectivity of the Web, and talks about this extremely dated and somewhat obscure topic almost exclusively in terms of a single company, one which saw maybe two years of moderate success before going into a now seven year period of decline.
While to have a listing in Wikipedia is certainly a blessing to the company in question, especially when it is a listing that owing to the nature of its business has all of the negatives of the business automatically filtered out as an unintended consequence of Wikipedia policy, one might well wonder how Wikipedia benefits from carrying such a listing. Aside from the inescapable NPOV issues, there is the matter of significance - something that gives a tiny trickle of traffic to a small minority of the less well known sites on the Web is simply not significant. If you're going to accept something like this as being significant enough for inclusion on the basis that somebody uses it, what on the Web wouldn't qualify for an article? Yet there is still a general understanding that the subject matter of a Wikipedia article has to be significant, and if everything is significant, then that understanding doesn't mean anything, and if it doesn't mean anything, then why did anybody bother to come to it?
Conclusion: Your deletion of the passage was appropriate, you just didn't delete enough. :) Wikipedia is just not the place for an article on this topic. 24.14.125.18 00:15, 22 June 2007 (UTC) Just me

[edit] Why is this considered part of "spamming"?

I was surprised to see that this article is associated with spam, & don't understand the connection. Obviously, Webrings are a means to improve visibility for websites -- but in the way a web portal or a directory does, by collecting links of related sites. It is passive, unlike spam, which is distinguished by actively assaulting the end user for attention.

My concern is not based on my feeling s about spam or advertising: it is based on concern about categorizing articles. -- llywrch 18:58, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

I understand what you mean, and I agree. This article should not be categorized under forms of Spam. --Surfaced 02:45, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Clarifications (from an anonymous WebRing.com staffer)

WebRing.com is the main focus of this article because we are the first publicly-available WebRing management system. The history of web rings is mostly (but not exclusively) the history of WebRing.com.

WebRing is mentioned in spam because it's is considered a type of link farm, although we try to avoid that comparison.

I would argue that web rings are notable not for their current status (a usable but not great advertising system), but for the place they/we have in Internet history. Anyone who was an avid web surfer between 1994 and 1997 probably knows web rings, even if they don't know the company.

This article is another example of why I think the Wikipedia foundation should host a wiki of original research. Research could go through peer review there, and then be used on WP. --66.241.66.190 20:12, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Death of webrings?

Nearly every website I went to used to belong to a webring, but I see fewer and fewer of them these days. Am I just browsing different sites, or have other people noticed this too? Is it a trend? --Thenickdude (talk) 20:11, 1 May 2008 (UTC)