Given how worried everyone is about the AI slopocalypse where the internet is drowned in LLM-generated junk content maybe it's time for a resurgence of human curated directories like this one.
Given how worried everyone is about the AI slopocalypse where the internet is drowned in LLM-generated junk content maybe it's time for a resurgence of human curated directories like this one.
Let's bring back the webring.
The no ai webring is full of really unique stuff. There’s definitively people out there still doing webrings. Now we need a metawebring.
https://baccyflap.com/noai/
Slop sucks and all, but those abandoned "let's make pages look like geocities" sites are pretty tiresome.
Because you don't find them visually interesting or because of their content?
There's a whole world of modern unindexed handcoded html + light js sites that really hearken back to the mid-90s web, and they're often part of webrings.
Yeah I have indexed a lot of em. I'm specifically talking about the ones that try to resemble the archetypal personal geocities site with tiled backgrounds, gifs, and whatnot. I've found that these predominantly were created as part of a web fad and were quickly abandoned.
I am all for handcoded html, SSGs, and minimal-to-no js.
I still enjoy those, because they're very true to the era. How many of us learned html by viewing source and copying bits from the sites we liked with no clearer vision than "I want that on my site, too!"?
To me, _any_ non-commercial human expression on the web is heartening, even if it lacks authenticity or taste. We've all been ruled by the effects of overreach of adtech for far too long.
My mtg site is kind of one of those. I use a static site generator, but I wrote the html templates and CSS myself to match the aesthetic I wanted.
I have robots.txt configured to keep it mostly unmolested, but I don't think it's fully unindexed.
That said, it's not very evocative of 90s web style. I do not miss those days (despite being the owner of a webhosting/design company at the time).
mtg as in magic the gathering?. You can't mention a personal website without linking the website itself
i would love to take a look
Since you asked... https://thenethervoid.com/
There isn't a whole lot there currently, since I'm pretty slow to post. I'm working on some deck analysis pieces currently and have some community-focused articles in draft form on my laptop.
I'm part of one and I don't think it really promotes discoverability. What could work would be some kind of search engine restricted to said webring to make a button to list similar articles. At least I would click on such a button!
I'm on the Merveilles ring and it has such a local/"neighbourhood" search, hosted by one of the members: https://lieu.cblgh.org
Pretty cool, and seems easy to set up
As someone who wasn't around in their true heyday I'm all for it.
Webrings were cool, and I wish I could find some for my own niche hobbies that were curated by dedicated parties.
I also miss Guestbooks, but know that they'd just be a cesspool now.
I joined a web ring last year, but I'm uncertain about it. Modern web rings tend to automate updates to the next/prev buttons, so I'm never sure what I'm linking to. The web ring owner acts as curator, but I don't know how much effort they put in to keep slop or other undesirable content out.
Yup. Search engines will basically be dead. Anything you’d type into a search engine you will probably prompt from an LLM instead.
But hand curated human directories should in theory have a very high signal to noise ratio. Every link should take you to a quality site.
It was tried before (e.g. Dmoz) and it does not work after it becomes popular.
I'm thinking more like just taking all the text files from 80-90s and making a separate static, frozen in time internet.
Dmoz was trying to replicate the Yahoo! style of directory, which requires being comprehensive.
Today we don't need comprehensive, we need maximum signal and minimum noise.
If you're not trying to be comprehensive it's not a real directory, it's just an ordinary "awesome-list".
would you call HN just "an awesome list"?
Yes. With comments.
Not really. Awesome lists are mostly curated by an individual, the bar for making it on that list isn’t the same as HN where the community decides the popularity of the entries
I'd like to argue that Wikipedia also tries to be comprehensive within the limits of relevant topics. And overall, Wikipedia still seems to be going strong.
I'd argue that Wikipedia and its 'sister' projects have accidentally cannibalized a sizeable fraction of the former 'non-commercial, non-business focused' Internet of the 1990s and early 2000s. If you're providing information in a way that's not intended to further some sort of profit motive, it makes sense to work within that large established project because that maximizes the resulting exposure. The rise of LLMs only makes this starker, every LLM is trained from Wikipedia.
> Wikipedia [..] have [..] cannibalized a sizeable fraction of the former 'non-commercial, non-business focused' Internet of the 1990s and early 2000s
Interesting take. Do you mean Wikipedia has cannibalized the traffic to these web sites or do you mean that Wikipedia lead to these web sites going offline altogether?
The first blog i found on this website was full of ai generated image slop
https://www.bankeronwheels.com/
There is no ai in the content, in fact it's probably the best finance blog in Europe - the ai likely used it to be trained on. Cover images probably yes but they use their own characters. Anyways, cover images are not what you're there for. Content is absolutely top notch.
Hear! Hear!