Something to think about, if you were ever thinking of accepting an invitation to take over an Arts ring at Webring.com. One can't help but notice, when looking at the statistics at a typical ring, just how little traffic seems to be coming through - generally less than half as many hits per day as there are sites on the ring, or fewer. Surfing the ring, one finds one of the reasons why that is, fairly quickly - there are a lot of really, really bad sites on a lot of rings. The experience of wading through those is not going to make somebody want to return to see more. Some will ask, "don't ringmasters understand that, and if so, why don't they start focusing a little more on quality and a little less on quantity?". But, the sad reality is that some ringmasters do want to focus on quality, and find that they are not being allowed to do so.

I used to be the helper on something called the AllArts ring, devoted to, well, just that - all of the arts. Some might criticise the concept as reflecting a lack of focus, but it was a very good ring which I took real pleasure in being part of. And then one day, not so long ago, we found that we had to get rid of it, and that all of the work that went into making it a reality, on the part of all involved from the very beginning, was going to go to waste. Our parting letter to the ring said it all, we think. Not that it mattered much, as Webring would soon resurrect the ring we had just deleted, but we stand behind these words.

• From: Us
• To: the members of the ring
• Subject: We're deleting the AllArts ring

Why on earth would we do a thing like that, you ask? It's an excellent ring that brings exposure to artists who both deserve it and need it, introducing the viewer to work from people he might not have otherwise had a chance to hear about. Doesn't sound like a good thing to get rid of, does it? The truth is, we really hate to do this, but it has to be done, because as is so often the case, an administrative person has decided to step in with a half-baked idea.

Webring has adopted a policy that holds that no ring is going to be allowed to have more than three pending applicants for any length of time. "Aha!", thinks some admin somewhere, "at last I have ended the frustration of having to wait weeks for one's site to be approved". But frustration is an inevitable part of life, especially when the work being performed is being performed without pay, by people who do, after all, have lives of their own outside of the Internet and these volunteer jobs.

Doing well in school and at work, making time for family and friends, pursuing one's own creative interests - these are all things more important and more meaningful than running even the best webring ever could be, and when these things start to suffer because Webring wants to start treating unpaid volunteers as if they were slaves, something has to give. This expectation of theirs would be outrageous in the running of any ring, but it is pure insanity when applied to an Arts ring.

The difference between kitsch and art is that art grows on you. On each return visit, you see things in it that you never saw before, as you are forever changed in the process. For this reason, snap decisions in the judging of art are bad decisions, an exercise in insane overconfidence. How can one imagine that one has such perfect knowledge, not merely of the unknowable self as it is in the moment, but as it will be in moments which have not yet come?

But, that doesn't matter to Webring, which in true MBA fashion, thinks that art webring memberships are to be stocked as if they were cans of beer in a convenience store, to be put out and moved as quickly as possible, without a second thought.

This is no way to advance the cause of art, though it is definitely an excellent way to advance the cause of an admin who will do anything to not have to deal with complaints, however ludicrous those complaints may be. We could not go along with these demands without damaging our careers and personal lives, for the sake of doing a bad job of running what would become an increasingly mediocre webring, one poorly serving its core membership, its audience, and the cause of art. We wouldn't do that. Nobody capable of appreciating what it is, that we are here to do, could.

We regret any inconvenience this may cause some of you, but if this ring isn't going to be allowed to serve its intended purpose, then let us be done with it while our memories of it can still be good ones. Goodbye and best wishes.


The staff at the former AllArts ring.

End of letter. Did I mention that there were over 350 member sites on that Webring? Having four sites in the queue was little more than a random fluctuation, something that one would expect to periodically see with that many sites feeding potential applicants into the ring. Meaning that there would be no way for us to follow the policy as stated, without turning the application process into a virtual revolving door, because we'd have no time to ponder an application, given the concern that others would come tumbling in while we did so. No, we didn't just delete the thing. Doing so felt a little like putting down a family pet. But the only response we got out of Webring was a purely mechanical one, offering no sign that anybody was prepared to so much as listen to a single word we had to say. There was nothing else left for us to do but delete the thing, and be amazed at the bureaucratic stupidity of it all.

To say nothing of the infantile pettiness that followed. Within 24 hours, my own membership had been deleted by Webring. Within 48 hours, apparently unsatisfied with merely inflicting their corporate temper tantrum on me, they took to deleting the Webring accounts of a number of my friends and associates. As of the time of this writing in early February of 2004, our sites are still appearing in the rings we signed them up for, but we can no longer log into Webring, or edit our ring memberships, should we need to change urls, or want to update our site descriptions. I'd add that we can't sign up for any new rings at Webring.com, but why would we want to? (Note : a few days later, the people at Webring reversed this part of their decision).

One point that I make in the Halls of Eternal Disbelief, over and over to the point of beating it to death, is that a major part of what seems to be becoming the Internet ethic is a desire to turn the world upside down. When those ringmasters who attempt to make entry into their rings something resembling a juried process find themselves in 'trouble' for doing so, because some applicants want to bypass that process and some siteadmins want to appease them, "upside down" is exactly the phrase needed to describe the political reality that has arisen, one in which the irresponsible are now dictating terms to the responsible, who are expected to pretend that all is well - or else! Best just to walk away from such a situation, because sanity is not going to be making an appearance any time soon.

This page is part of the Halls of Eternal Disbelief, home of Café Satan, "where eternal damnation never tasted so good".