computers in astronomy

Register your astronomy-related Web site in a webring and join a community of like-minded online resources.

astronomy online By Stuart J. Goldman

Investigating Webring Communities

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f you want to find a new Web site,

you typically do it either by using an
Internet search engine such as AltaVista
(www.altavista.com) or by browsing lists
of links in a site you already know (such
as www.skypub.com/resources/links/links.
html). If youre on the hunt for something new and have specific astronomical
interests in mind, you may want to exploit another prospect that has a more
communal nature: the webring.
This moniker refers to a set of sites
with similar themes that are associated by
more than just an underlined hyperlink.
In a webring, several to several dozen sites
are strung together like a circle of dancers
holding hands. Standardized navigation
buttons usually an element in a logo
allow you to run through the sites sequentially or jump around randomly.
You may have already come
across a site sporting one of
the webring logos displayed
on this page. These are just a
sampling. To browse or
search through more than
600 webrings consisting of
thousands of Web sites, visit,

appropriately enough, www.webring.com.

Although a reasonable number of the
rings are strictly astronomy-related, a
keyword search on astronomy will nevertheless reveal collections of science fiction, astrology, and spirituality sites.
Each ring has a home
base Web site, typically
that of the person who
founded the ring. For example, the Amateur Telescope Making
webring of 72 sites is hosted by S*T*A*R
Astronomy
(www.starastronomy.org).
Mark C. Farrington launched the Stellar
Visions general-astronomy ring, which as
of mid-May had 44 sites (www.geocities.
com/CapeCanaveral/Launchpad/2656/).
The home for the 26 sites of the Meade
ETX ring is James F. Baynes Celestial
Seasonings (http://users.nac.
net/jimbayne/astronomy.
html). Radio-Sky Publishing
(www.radiosky.com) hosts the
Radio Astronomy webring of
22 sites.
If you want to add your
own site to a webring, you do

August 2000 Sky & Telescope

2000 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

so at its home site by filling out a short

online form. You can then download the
images and HTML code to put the webring logo on your page. Webring hosts
are responsible for evaluating new sites,
to ensure that they are legitimate. Since not all personal sites are informational tours de force, some
rings have specific quality
guidelines to meet. And
should a site fall off the Internet, the host
will prune it from the ring to keep the
circle unbroken.
Most of the astronomy-related webrings
have fewer than 25 sites; a couple have
more than 100. Some sites are cross-linked,
belonging to two or more rings at once.
Although many poorly defined or small
(fewer than five sites) rings are registered,
the webring concept shines for specialized
subjects such as those noted above.
The Internet is often mocked as a promoter of asocial behavior (www.stanford.
edu/dept/news/pr/00/000216internet.html).
Webrings help counter this by bringing a
sense of community to those who share
astronomical interests.