It's unfair to demand all costs from content generation to hosting to be borne by the "owners." For the web to work better, we need more aligned incentives, not to disregard the understandable demand of creators of websites and services to get somehow compensated. I do find ads annoying but I find the expectation that everything be absolutely free on the internet quite ridiculous.

Also, even when websites are built without any intention of monetization, there are still goals which the creators want to achieve. Some sites are free because they want to change public opinion or facilitate cooperation between groups of people for a common purpose. Others are made to showcase skills or for academic purposes. Lots of people are making all kinds of websites. Some want to be paid and that's fine.

I was talking about who would pay to gather and curate the content. The larger the ring the more effort it would take, and someone has to run that service/pay something (whether it's money, time or effort) to keep such an effort going and worthwhile.

Well I didn't think about it too much but the idea is that the more "salesy" the site (i.e. the further they stray from the ideals of the webring/directory), the higher the price.

Also, I wasn't thinking of a stream-of-posts type thing -- more like private, curated search but I guess having a stream makes sense too.

Either way, the question then becomes would enough people pay whatever monthly fee would keep the site viable (pay for the curation, bandwidth, etc) to prevent the people running the service from making compromises on the vision...