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Meteor or Barringer Crater - Arizona The impact of the Yahoo Webring fiasco was huge. Within three weeks, tens of thousands of Sites had transferred to other servers. On September 5 Ringsurf had 2412 Rings. On September 29 their number of Rings had grown to 4654, and their total number of Sites had grown by more than 20000 to 26036. |
Resources
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 Here are some surprise links. (after all, you never really know what's really Next with James): James has now offered the Javascript that "produces" his Wazillion Navbars to anyone interested, and it's in the text box on my Page One. Feel free to copy / paste this to become part of the "Wazillion Navbars Project" ! ! ! Go to that section and see for yourself [ HERE ] |
Underground Strategies
I was born shortly after the Second World War in Holland, at the time still scarred by the ravages of that gruesome time. My Dad was rather clever in the Underground movement. I guess I have learnt some ways of doing things from him. There are ways to "trick" the system, wherever you are, and where there is a need for it. This page describes my own thinking and ways of dealing with the Yahoo!/WebRing fiasco. It also shows more examples of "resistance WebRings", as they have been formed within the first couple of weeks. [ read]Commercialising your Family Site
What happened to Webring.org on September 5, 2000, was not unexpected. Many people have the feeling that they were not told enough, like Ringmakers commented "....we don't know much more than what comes from Bob Marion, the moderator of WebRingnews...."
The developments however, are not new. In an article on Internetworld (www.Internet.com), as early as October 20, 1997, Andrew Marlatt writes:The Navbar - a new idea?
by Andrew Marlett - October 20, 1997
"Advertising, Webring's source of income, has also not been vigorously pursued, noted Starseed's president, Charley Lanusse. Currently, banner space is available only on the RingWorld page--the site's directory of available rings--or within the ring on a "Next 5" button, which delivers users a list of the next five sites in that ring. To create more ad space, Webring will feature a new Java-based navigation toolbar that sits outside the system and follows the user through a ring." [ read article ]
Note 1: *** Two days after I quoted this article on WebRingNews, the link to this (and another) article was broken - I could no longer access it (at least not from my own browser) The article was kindly reposted by James S. Huggins in another location.
Note 2: Bob Marion refers to this navigation toolbar as "The Old Navbar". [ read ]Who owns a Webring? - or: Catch the Thief!
From webringnews - Post #4798 - whyborg70of14000000
"Ringmasters seek clarification from Yahoo! whether Rings are truly deleted, when Ringmasters press the suicide-button" - And, (yes, I've been reading posts!) whether this is a design problem or a implementation problem. Because Yahoo! may WANT to keep the Rings (after all they are potential holders of a Yahoo! ID.) That raises another issue: who "owns" a Ring? The Ring community, or Yahoo!? - It would be great, if about THIS there were agreement between Yahoo! and Ringmasters.
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Two days after I quoted of these articles on WebRingNews and other forums, the link to these articles was broken - I could no longer access them (at least not from my own browser) The (top of list) article by Andrew Marlatt has been reposted at another location: Webrings, profit and advertising Most agree that Yahoo! created
the [negative] perception itself by communicating poorly with the community.
Users advocated various courses of action, ranging from "wait and see"
or "complain" to "mail-bomb them" or "abandon WebRing".
"due to increasing costs of maintaining this free service, we need to include a small banner add to the navigational bar which appears with the ***RING ID*** you belong to. This banner add will only be served to your Site one a one-in-three basis, i.e. every third time a viewer visits your page, the banner add will appear below your navigation bar. We apologize for this inconvenience. To learn more about how to avoid advertising from being shown on your page, click [ here ]" From Jack Smit's horror journal, September 2000. 
As an example of a cookie, look at this. The cookie sent by Yahoo! to your computer is more invasive than the one which shows here how much information can be collected by a company about you. The Yahoo! cookie type is called a "persistent cookie". |
Evasive
strategies
I then went to the Hub Page of the Ring at Yahoo! and uploaded the yellow image, which tells people where they can join. It may catch some people who are looking at Yahoo!'s Directory. My own strategy in maintaining the Natural Healing Web Ring at Yahoo! is not perfect. I am partly driven by a need to outsmart strategies, partly by a stubborn unwillingness to submit to the remotely served Javascript. I have opened the Ring again, after reading a post by James S. Huggins in ringmgr@e-groups. James pointed out, that when the email arrrives at the Ringmanager's mailbox, you can write them back, using the Application Site management tools, explain what you would like to do, and stay in touch with them if you have decided to move to a Yahoo! competitor. I fear that the next step
in the strategy by Yahoo! who serves a Javascript-driven navigation bar,
may be to serve you advertising. Because a company can send you not just
the NavBar, but could include a banner add with it. Or instead of it. This
could happen when your Site gets suspended by your Ringmaster for some
reason, or when the Ring is declared "abandoned", or when the NavBar server
"is down", or...
All this has started to belong
to the possibilities of this new system. Because "an outsider" serves you
up something. They have control over that, as long as you allow this Javascript
to be in your page's html source code.
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private Web Pages and Sites How a debate started on WebRingNews I recently posted an item on WebRingNews about remotely served GIF images. There is what I said - without knowing entirely whether I was right: The 1x1 pixel gif
That's where you may as well say, that you, when you allow the NavBars on your pages, you allow commercial interests to have a "look-in". And that means, that the Y!WR project is so valuable (for them, not you....). Also, the remotely served
script can in theory be replaced by, or accompanied by, other items, like
an advertising banner (say, when the NavBar server is down). A company
which intends to purchase Yahoo! somewhere in the future, then can put
a value on "the product" by looking at the statistics. They can so "buy"
your page. Never mind you are not commercial, but just a family photo-album
private site. With the Navbar in place you are a commercial Site. No-Way-Out!
Post #5180 - kornputer (M/Sparks, NEVADA!) 9/28/00 11:32 am The 1x1 pixel gif (blank.gif)
in the Nav Bar is used for formatting purposes. It fills the table cell
to draw that little line between the ringpage title and the ring links.
The server (http://us.yimg.com) "yimag" is the yahoo image server where
graphics are stored. All three graphics, the ring graphic wrsm1.gif, blank.gif,
and the ringmaster supplied 50x50 icon are kept there. There is nothing
sinister about the 1x1 gif graphic and it is not a "web-bug." That is pure
propaganda started by someone's clueless post while back and is being spread
like a stupid urban legend. The fact is, using a server call of any type
is all that is needed to collect all the data "They" may want on the user
including any cookie data (user ID), surfing history, and sperm count.
Be sure to cover your monitor screen with tinfoil to block the "camera"
pointed at you. <sheesh!>
As far a yahoo is concerned,
1. Yahoo doesn't rely on the services of "external" advertisers (the core
of the "web bug" FAQ). Because Yahoo collects all data is "in house" (i.e.
direct server calls) the need of web bugs unnecessary.
Post #5180 jackhsmit (M/Yahoo's Paradise) 9/28/00 2:57 pm OK, here we go. Watch this space. First: I think that this discussion about 1x1 pixels, advertising and tracking is not off-post. [There is a rule on WebRingNews, that you don't put up issues that don't really relate to the discussion] It relates to the NavBar, and what it sends to user's sites. Many of us are still "choosing" between staying with Yahoo Webring or leaving Y!/WR [as Ringmasters with our Web Rings] and as such are informing ourselves in this Club. Now then. Here is an article snippet from Internetworld.com , an online "magazine", I think. It reports about Webring's plans as far back as October 20, 1997 [reported by Andrew Marlett]: <quote>"Advertising, Webring's source of income, has also not been vigorously pursued, noted Starseed's president, Charley Lanusse. Currently, banner space is available only on the RingWorld page--the site's directory of available rings--or within the ring on a "Next 5" button, which delivers users a list of the next five sites in that ring. To create more ad space, Webring will feature a new Java-based navigation toolbar that sits outside the system and follows the user through a ring"</quote> http://www.internetworld.com/print/1997/10/20/markcomm/19971020-webrings.html
I hope this post does NOT get deleted. This relates exactly to what have been the plans BEFORE geocities even bought Webring. The Navbar was developed to invade your family photo album with advertising. For no other reason. What do you want, Ringmaster? Make up your mind! Jack H. Smit
Post #5215 - webringnews (35/M/Kentucky) 9/29/00 12:02 am About the old NavBar: The
old NavBar was a beta test type system that was placed in the old system,
only a hand full of RM's used it and it started giving error messages when
in use. My ring tested it for a couple of months but we decided to stick
with the tried and true methods of the day. I don't remember it being JS,
as I remember it was called thru the WR cgi system. Never looked at the
output source either, I just didn't care for the look of opening an extra
window for ring surfers.
A standard Unix type server can track the above by simply loading a page on that server without any embedded code. Any request to a server carries certain information back to the server from the browser. So in the end, calling the
old HTML fragments sent information to the webring servers too, it was
called stats. The Y! servers would, in my personal opinion, look for some
very basic information:
In the long run you can't visit any page anywhere without some information being transmitted to the server. It's not the graphic that tracks you, it's the software delivering that graphic that tracks you and that can be the server or a cgi script. That is the way the W3C wrote the standards to be. THE BOB - Senior Club Moderator
Thanks Bob! I will probably start a topica.com list soon to discuss NavBar & Remotely served scripts Ethics and Issues, that's a better place than this forum (and I don't understand all of your info). I want to invite you and others with your knowledge level here as well to post their views. This post then is also an invite for everyone who can contribute to this discussion to email me, and visit my In Memoriam Page in the next week or so to enter their email address and join the topica forum. Thanks for your response! Jack
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image provided courtesy of Holidays4Fun |
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views expressed on this page
and the linked pages are not neccesarily the views we endorse.
Next
(after explaining the consequences of staying with Yahoo!, having to have
a Yahoo! ID) I started a new Natural Healing Web Ring at Ringsurf, and
emailed all my members to tell them about this. After three weeks I noticed
that eight members had linked a Yahoo! ID to their Site and some of them
had a NavBar on their Site. While I respect them for that choice, I took
some creative action. I made a little picture and uploaded that to the
Yahoo! server. The picture is displayed on the NavBar when it loads. It
says: "Resubmit your Site as soon as possible".
