web rings: avoid or pursuit

[anton23]

Are commercial/professional/web rings links exchange program to be avoided or pursuited?
What are the pitfalls? What are the advantages?

[Tapolyai]

My personal experience with web rings were dismal.

I received no traffic, and the only person's site that increased in traffic where the "administrator's". The ring was set up so all the non-responsive sites were redirected to his site.

So, the bright side of it, if you run your own ring, that is great for you. Otherwise, I would not bother.

[richlowe]

I have a lot of experience with webrings. If you are going to self-host the ring (or you want to join a self-hosted ring), then it can be useful. The ring "services", all of them, are worthless in the extreme.

[Lorel]

The main pitfall I see with them is that the code NEVER validates and it takes too much time to fix the code and they they "update" the code and you have to do it again. When I use them I put them on a webring page so they don't interfere with anything else.