categories of web sites

[calimac]

that you find when cleaning up your bookmark files.

1. The really useful sites that are gone, and have to be trawled for out of the Internet Archive.

1a. The ones that aren't in the Internet archive.

2. The once-useful link farms that you know have gone cruddy, because they still list sites from categories 1 and 1a.

3. The pages that don't come up from the bookmark because the site owner has moved them to another directory, usually one with a title synonymous with the old directory title.

4. The download pages for freeware that have become ad pages for expensiveware.

5. The highly-touted new sites that didn't yet have anything on them when you bookmarked them, and turn out still to have nothing on them five years later.

6. The sites that have been eaten by other sites that you already had bookmarked.

7. The blogs that have moved to new hosts.

8. The pay sites you bookmarked when you had access to them at your last job, but don't have access to any more.

8a. The ones you still know the password to.

9. The sites that you can't tell about, because the host isn't responding.

10. The sites that are still where you left them.

Comments

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

I've been needing to clean my bookmarks file for, um, Way Too Long now. Thanks for the amusing reminder.

[yarram.livejournal.com]

You forgot to list "the formerly useful sites that are now owned by pr0n vendors". This probably goes under 4a.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Subcategories of 1, sites that aren't there any more. When you look for them, you find:

Sites that return giant 404s.

Sites that return ad pages for the hosting vendor.

Sites that suggest possibilities that "you might like/want instead," which are invariably hilariously off.

Sites that have become pr0n vendors.

And a subcategory of the last, sites that have become pr0n vendors that proliferate popunders.

All these: go look for the original site in the Internet Archive.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

I moved most of my original site to romm.org when I had the chance, but partially to allay 3 (or 7), I've left the old site up, with links to the new urls. It doesn't cost all that much, gives me another isp option if necessary, and it still gets lots of hits.

Ah, my ~romm site on visi. While it's actually the second url (when winternet screwed up and everyone left), it's one of the oldest websites in the world. Bragging rights, doncha know. (Though I suspect many people reading this have similar if not more boisterous bragging rights.)

[asimovberlioz.livejournal.com]

Irritation #3 has happened time and again with the LASFS website over the years.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Was the cause a series of bungee webmasters?

(a la Dilbert's Bungee Boss, like so:)

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

Were you intentionally parodying Italo Calvino?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

We have absorbed Calvino. Calvino is our environment.

And a little Le Guin.