Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Websites/Early web history task force: Difference between revisions

The obvious starting point is TimBL's first CERN pages, but I think it makes sense to at least recognize precursor technologies like Gopher, Archie and WAIS. Here's a way cool page (with a modified date of Thu, Nov 26, 1992 7:06:21 AM!). And a URL which, alas, has not been kept alive: http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/whats-new.html

As for the terminus ante quem... hard to say. The Netscape IPO seems like a reasonable place to start, and then let's see. · rodii · 00:12, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I guess I'd be broad, at least to start with. If we met someone who (say) had great information on early Usenet, I surely wouldn't turn them away. On the other hand, while Google Groups is around, Usenet is still accessible in a way early websites are not. Zompist 03:55, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose standards for notability for defunct or early websites. Ideally this would be heavily time-weighted: e.g. maybe everything from August 1991 is inherently notable, which only a fraction of things from December 1995. This may end up being more like detective work than like comparing to a nice easy benchmark. Some possible clues to notability:
  • MSM references
  • Prominent placement in early web sites already established as notable guides, e.g. the NCSA Mosaic What's New page
  • Firsts (and maybe seconds and thirds) of any kind: first comedy site, first "X of the Day" site, first personal web page, first e-commerce app...
  • Traffic per day reports, compared to some baseline of web traffic over time. That is, it's pretty easy to find someone saying "I get 6000 unique page hits a day now!" We look it up in our timeline and see if that's a lot for its day, or a little.
    • Factoid from a 1995 book I've got on web design: the number of Web servers increased 10,000% between June 1993 and Dec. 1994. In mid-1995, there were two to five million websites.

• Find or create models for a good encyclopedia article on an early website. In the last few days I've been researching e.g. Mirsky's and the Brunching Shuttlecocks, and struggling with this. Some bits are easy: a description of the content; anything the site did first; outside attention; interviews with site authors. But it's hard to make the material come alive, to become encyclopedic rather than a list of trivia about the site. Zompist 03:55, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]