The Faerie Ring and Yahoo!'s Webring


When Yahoo! took over the Webring system in the summer of 2000, they eliminated many of the features which made Webring so good to manage. They seem to prefer that we use their ugly bars to display Webring membership, and would like all of us to use their server-side JavaScript navigation.

Well, not all browsers support JavaScript, and even those who do have widely varying versions of "support."

I sent an email to the members of The Faerie Ring, voicing my concerns and asking opinions on whether to move the Ring. All but one responded positively. The only concern in a response (which I shared) is that since Webring is most popular, our exposure might be less were we to move.

I eventually found workarounds for Yahoo!'s originally mess, and Yahoo! did promise not to make the older rings go to server-side JavaScript. Then, in December, they made the rings impossible to manage otherwise. The "last straw" was with "Ring Randomnization" - a feature that Webring had fully implemented and supported before Yahoo! When the sites were Randomnized on the List page, the link to a site took one to another site on the ring!

So, I have "closed" The Faerie Ring - it's still there, but I am no longer accepting submissions to that ring, and am encouraging everyone to instead join Rath Changeling, which is set up through the RPG Consortium's NetPortal system. This is good - it will be nice to have our Rath on a system dedicated to gamers.

Jhardhel


Rath Changeling | Why | The Change