In simple words, because the new "server-side navigation bar", advertised like a blessing by the Yahoo! Webring staff, is degrading: it makes every Webring the same in design, it puts the stress on Yahoo! itself, rather than the Ring they host. RingMaster and Mistresses are deprived of their right to stand out of Yahoo!'s schemes about Webrings and customize their navigation fragments. Ring members are compelled to have a navigation bar which they can't customize and so, if it happens to look ugly in the context of their website design, they're done for. If you can't understand what this all means, have a look at James Huggins' Wazillion Navbars Project and see how the navigation bars of all those Webrings look the same, contrary to what happened at webring.org before Yahoo! acquired it. Needless to say, the chance of customizing one's navigation fragments webring.org used to offer was one of the reasons of its success, as the recent growth of RingSurf (the ring hosting service we moved to, which is about as customizable as the old webring.org) proves.
We believe in people. We believe in freedom of expression.
Yahoo! believes in itself. Yahoo! believes in making everyone look the same.
[NEW - October 21st, 2000] Yahoo! recently (five days ago) published a statement which, among other things, includes the following:
Rings that were established prior to September 5, 2000 that use the original WebRing HTML fragment will not be required to replace that code with the server-side navigation bar, now or in the future. We will serve the HTML fragment as we currently do and will not require a code replacement. Your Ring will continue to operate as it always has. RingMasters will not have to ask all members to replace the code, and we are not requiring RingMasters to replace the Ring logos and fragments that they have put so much work into.
Is this good news? Before cheering for Yahoo!, I would consider that the statements doesn't say anything about new rings, which will supposedly be required to use the server-side navigation bars. What does this mean? I believe that most of us first learnt of webrings by browsing sites linked to each other within a webring.org ring, which is now Yahoo! Webring. They learnt how good webring.org was, what features made it so successful (i.e. being customizable first of all – the feature that is causing RingSurf to be so successful now), and eventually decided to join or found a Webring, knowing they would be able to make their ring look the way they wanted to, as that was what they had found in the visited ring. In short, each ring acted as an 'advertisement' for webring.org itself.
With this new policy, old Yahoo! Webrings are allowed to keep their good old looks, but new rings are forced to use the ugly navbars.
In other words – Yahoo! tries to keep old members from moving. That way, those rings can still act as a sort of 'advertisement' so that people who choose to find a new ring learn about Yahoo! Webring rather than RingSurf or other ring hosting services. If you don't learn about other services, which one are you gonna use?! But Yahoo! Webring, of course! But that one no longer offers new Ringmasters that chance to customize your ring which, as the events of the last weeks should teach us, is the real key to success for ring hosting services. My feelings are that Yahoo! is someway, as each ring is an advertisement to its host, making false promises to Ringmasters-to-be in its advertisement. :o) Also, what is going to happen if you join a 'new' Yahoo! Webring, which requires the use of the new navigation bar, and when you paste the navbar code onto your page you see the navbars for every ring you have joined, even those for which you have an HTML fragment? Is Yahoo! going to work on this? Who knows.
We have decided to move to RingSurf, and we're not stepping back – on October 31st, as promised, our Yahoo! Webring will be dismantled, leaving only a few sites as a way to inform possible surfers who might find it that the ring now exists on RingSurf.
Thanks for reading this notice.
Because sooner or later Yahoo! would have made the use of the 'server-side navigation bar' mandatory, on October 2nd, 2000 Solace suggested that Silence be moved to a different ring hosting service which would allow us to keep our good old navigation HTML fragment.
On October 4th, 2000 the candidate service (RingSurf) was named, and all members were e-mailed on the matter, asking if they would mind moving the Ring. Out of 49 members at the time, 9 replied asking that the move be done. Others just replied that they wouldn't mind submitting their site again and changing the HTML fragment on their pages. No-one complained about the possible move or showed signs of approval towards the Yahoo! server-side navigation bar.
On October 9th, 2000 Silence was created on RingSurf. The name Silence ~ Vincent Valentine Webring was kept despite the fact that rings are called 'Net Rings' at RingSurf, to make it clear that the ring is actually the same in inspiration, design and management as the old one hosted by the old webring.org
On October 21st, 2000 the member sites in the new ring are 22 (19 having migrated out of 49 'old' member sites, and 3 new ones). Big thanks to all those who have helped us with the migration so far!
On October 27th, 2000 we started a new message board, due to the ever-lasting technical problems with our old one at InsideTheWeb. If you are linking to the old message board you are invited to update your link to point to the new one. The URL for the new message board is http://www.voy.com/10409/
(the history will be updated as it takes place. So help build it: if you had a member site at Silence/webring.org, submit it to Silence/ringsurf.com! :o)
~ Eregil