Depending on when you showed up on the internet, you may or may not recall a little something called the webring. For the uninitiated:
A webring (or web ring) is a collection of websites linked together in a circular structure, usually organized around a specific theme, and often educational or social. They were popular in the 1990s and early 2000s, particularly among amateur websites.
I was just thinking about how to bring that back interconnectivity and make discovery less reliant on algorithm. Digging into it, it looks like a fairly simple thing to add on as code and host in a subdomain (basically for the php “guts” to make it work) and, unlike the old-school webring, can be designed to be randomized with a cookie that gives preference to sites that having been visited that are part of the ring, rather than a next/previous circular arrangement. Yes, it puts the thumb on scale of sites you haven’t visited yet, but that is the only algorithm I would employ. Nothing directed.
The nice thing, I can design it to be purely HTML, which would work on most sites, including WordPress and other blogging services.
I was thinking of maybe doing a curated fiction writer’s ring, but I don’t want to do it if I end up being the only one participating (it kind of ruins the point). Are there any fiction writers who follow me interested in something like that?
All you would have to do is add a simple bit of HTML code in your footer or sidebar to call the style sheet and the curated list.
Let me know if you are writing fiction and are interested. Maybe I could cobble something together on the quick if enough hands are raised (meaning five participants, minimum).