Talk about Webring.com

[Killer]

Admin, do you mind if I start a thread on webring.com? I notice they are censoring messages. Perhaps you could share your view on what you did to your rings there if you own any.

 

[Admin]

Killer wrote:

Admin, do you mind if I start a thread on webring.com? I notice they are censoring messages. Perhaps you could share your view on what you did to your rings there if you own any.

Please feel free to start a thread on Webring. If it becomes a popular thread we may pin it so it stays at the top of the board. You're also welcome to mention the thread on Webring so people know there's a place they can discuss Webring without fear of censorship.

[Killer]

Admin, could you change the subject to talk about webring.com so that users know what we are talking about.

[Killer]

Siobhan wrote:
I don't know how that might go over with webring support (not sure whether or not the reports of them deleting posts or not are true, as I haven't had any of mine deleted), but I've been sending out e-mails to all of the members of my various rings notifying them that there are alternative systems to webring, though I haven't gotten any direct responses yet.

 

 

Webring did censor messages. I know it because I have subcribed to the forum. Whenever someone posted, my email have recieved it first hand. But it would be removed from the forum. This is how I know about Webringo because I got all of Webringo mails.

[Kittycat12]

I've seen them censoring messages this morning...someone posted a message about webringo (about this thread actually) and it was gone within a few minutes. They don't realize how terribly scared that makes them look. It's sad, really.

[Killer]

I am thinking they might even scan through mails ringmaster sends to ring members!! 

[Siobhan]

That would be unfortunate, but it's actually probably a better way of reaching out to ring members (as well as more discrete). Not everyone reads the forums, but everyone reads WRmail as soon as they log in. And while it's easy to monitor the forums, it's less so to monitor the account of every ring manager. 

[JZ]

I've ssen several posts that were there this morning suddenly disappear. They most definitely are censoring posts.

[Killer]

They just doesn't want anyone to question their actions. I guess they believe if you don't like what they are doing, you are free to quit the club.

[Killer]

This message was removed from webring just because it reminded it of its past. It is interesting to read anyway.

 

[quote]From: newedge2001

I have been a member of webring for a long time. I was a member when it was webring.org, featured the little black background, and you could search for keywords and descriptions, and could actually find rings with related topics in it. It was better than search engines. If you wanted to find rings for comic artists, you'd find comic artists; not things about trying to sell books about how to be a comic artist. It was cool! You could add your own cool little banners, or other animations. You could create awsome Ring codes.

Then, geocities bought it, followed by yahoo buying geocities, and things have gone downhill since.

If I remember, Webring is now free of Yahoo. *collective sigh of relief.* Sadly, the damage had been done. Webring was now little more than a search engine. No longer can one do a ring search, and find exactly what one wants. You have to jump through the same BS you do when trying to search through a search engine. As a result, I, and many others, don't bother with it as much.

Now, WR will be charging. I forget exact numbers, but you now must pay if you own x number of rings, and pay if you're on x number of rings. Again, this is now following the way of the big search engines, which makes it less appealing for the small business, or even the personal pages, that just want a place to meet. I'd rather have people here, meeting on the web, then going about and shooting people.

Now, I'm getting tons of messages, telling me that such a ring is being put up for adoption, because the webmaster/mistress doesn't want to pay for something that has been free for nearly a decade! I would be more than happy to have an ad web ring, and even put a *TINY* (text) ad to the ring code (not like Geocities huge frame, or lycos's huge bottom frame ads)!

The web becomes the latest thing corrupted by corporate greed, and without the web to distract us from their BS, what does that leave us?

IMO, I think people will be better off going to something like Ringsurf.com, as (for now) they're free, and are somewhat of a throwback to how WR once was in it's prime.

===
To view this message in context, or to respond, go:

http://G.webring.com/forum?forum=webring;did=2331
[/quote]

[Killer]

Users complained that their deleted rings get restored and goes under webring. So it seems that webring tries to take over rings belonging to other people. Anyway to prevent it?

[Ex-Webring Member]

1) Nothing can prevent people from removing the ring code from their site. Once that's done it doesn't matter if the ring still exists or not.

2) Each site owner (not ring owner) can delete their site(s) from a ring. Once that's done I believe it is permanent.

Ex-Webring Member

[Siobhan]

  Killer wrote:

Users complained that their deleted rings get restored and goes under webring. So it seems that webring tries to take over rings belonging to other people. Anyway to prevent it?

What I've been doing is... not deleting my rings.

Instead of deleting the memberships outright, I've gone to the "edit" section for each membership, and clicked on the "Leave this Ring" link. Theoretically (as I have no proof, but I'm hoping), this should be no different from the member themselves leaving the ring.

Once you have a ring with 0 sites (or 1 site, maybe your own), just leave it there. I don't know how often the webring system backs itself up, but hopefully it's often enough that by the time Jan 15th comes around (or is it 1st? Whenever we have to CHOOSE a level of membership), the ring data will be backed up without the memberships. Then on that date, delete the ring. If Webring's intent is truly to purge the system, why would they leave an empty ring? And if they do restore it, hopefully any customized information (logo, codes, etc.) will have been stripped.

That's about all I can think of. I've been adopting out most of my rings though, after stripping the info -- frankly, I don't give a damn about cluttering up Webring's system with junk.

But you also have to figure that when everyone's accounts are cut back to 2 rings and 5 memberships, half of the rings out there are going to drop to 0 membership anyway.

Siobhan

 

[Killer]

Siobhan wrote:

Instead of deleting the memberships outright, I've gone to the "edit" section for each membership, and clicked on the "Leave this Ring" link. Theoretically (as I have no proof, but I'm hoping), this should be no different from the member themselves leaving the ring. 

 

To do this for over 100 sites is a bit too tough. I will see perhaps I will delete partially and also change the name of the ring and logo.

 

[faeldray]

  Siobhan wrote:

What I've been doing is... not deleting my rings.

Instead of deleting the memberships outright, I've gone to the "edit" section for each membership, and clicked on the "Leave this Ring" link. Theoretically (as I have no proof, but I'm hoping), this should be no different from the member themselves leaving the ring.

That sounds like a pretty good idea. I think what I'm going to do is create multiple accounts and distribute my rings between them, just because there are some people who don't want to leave Webring. But I will encourage my members to join the duplicate ones at Webringo.

The owner of one of the rings I'm a member of sent us all an email saying that he was deleting it and creating a new one at RingSurf. The day after he deleted it, it was back up and running again! I don't think he knows about it.
http://s.webring.com/hub?ring=opossumsallysri1