 | Why another index of the WWW?
 | Because the ones I know all lack certain things, and because I have fun making this one. |
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| What is my basic system for classifying WWW pages?
| A strictly hierarchical one, by subject and sub-subject, ad
infinitum. |
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| What are the subject headings?
| My own. Based on common sense, and limited by title lengths imposed by
FrontPageŽ. |
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| What homepages have I included from the WWW?
| Pages with significant content. Being the sole editor, I decide what
content is significant. More seriously, I have preferred the universal
to the local and the complete to the partial. But in many cases I took
what I could find. |
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| Is anything excluded?
| Yes. In particular, pages in the following categories are not usually
included in my index:
 | personal and family homepages (although those of prominent people
might be present) |
| homepages of associations and organizations of local interest |
| homepages of businesses of local interest |
| homepages of educational institutions below the university level |
| pornography |
| ideological tracts (although pages of nationally or regionally
established political parties or religious bodies might qualify, as
might serious expositions of philosophical theories) |
| chatlines and newslines |
| advertising |
| pages requiring payment |
| pages not available to the general Internet user |
|
|
| Are some topics that are better represented than others?
| Yes. Subject areas that I am particularly interested in are more
likely to receive more complete coverage. These include:
| comparative linguistics |
| the classification of languages |
| certain aspects of mathematics (e.g. number theory) |
| astronomy and the search for extraterrestrial life |
| museums, zoos and theme parks |
| transportation (particularly urban transportation, railways and
airlines) |
| games and toys with which to model rail transportation (model
railroads, rail software) |
| imaginary countries and languages |
| bridge and chess |
| the countries of my childhood (Hungary) and my citizenship
(Canada) |
| other countries that I have lived and/or worked in (France,
Switzerland, Ghana, India) |
| languages I have studied and the cultures they represent
(Japanese, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi) |
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| Are there some topics that I neglect because I am not interested in them?
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| Would I consider doing this full time?
| Certainly. I am well qualified to edit a proper index of the Internet,
but such an activity would cost a lot of money and I don't know if
anyone wants to come up with that kind of cash. Let me know if you do... |
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| Are there any standards for the presentation of the indexed items?
| Yes. Here are some of them:
| Language
| English is the base language - I use it for subject headings,
titles (translated if need be) and my short descriptions
(summaries). |
| I spell English the Canadian way: colour, theatre
and levelled, on one hand, organization,
esthetics and jail, on the other. I do not, however,
change the spelling of webpage titles. |
|
| Title
| For unilingual web pages, I provide the original title (in
transliteration if necessary) and its English translation (in
brackets) if it is not in English already. If the page provides
an English translation that I do not like, I provide a better
one. |
| For multilingual web pages, I might provide versions in more
than one language, but only within reason. I shall certainly not
clutter up the index with 11 different titles for a European
Union document. |
| I normally use the title that appears at the top of the web
page concerned. As is good cataloguing practice, I provide my
own title between square brackets when there is no obvious title
on the page. |
| In certain kinds of listing, I dispense from providing the
actual title altogether. For example, if I list the home pages
of official tourist offices of cities, only the name of the city
will appear as the link. |
| Items are usually ordered alphabetically within the lowest
level of classification. Alphabetization rules of course exclude
the definite and indefinite article in any language. |
|
| Source/Author
| Except for the official home pages of organizations,
corporations or persons, I provide information on the author(s)
or source(s) of all my indexed items whenever possible. Some web
authors go to some length to avoid identification, in which case
their names go unrecorded. |
| The author or source of a document will be linked to the
appropriate home page whenever this information is easily
available. This might not be necessary, however, if this page is
the same as the indexed document itself. |
| The geographical location of author(s) and/or source(s) will
be noted whenever possible. This will consist of municipality,
state or province (in federations) [with standard abbreviation
if it exists] and country. But where the classification scheme
already includes the name of the country, state or province,
this information will not be included in the location of the
author, as it would be superfluous. |
|
| Language
| The language(s) of the document are noted at the end of the
internet reference line, within square brackets. |
| When the only language of the document is English, the
language information is omitted. Thus, if you do not see an
indication of language you may assume that the document is in
English only. |
| If the pages in some of the languages are not as complete as
in others, I try to note this fact in the language information.
E.g.: [In French and some German] |
|
| Summary
| The summary information on a web page always comes on a new
line in my index (i.e. a line break is inserted into the HTML
code). This may be short or long, as seems necessary to tell
potential users what the page is about. |
| References to home pages of organizations and corporations do
not generally need a summary. |
| There are other cases as well where I have judged that the
title is sufficiently informative and no summary is needed. |
|
| Subject level hierarchies
| I have decided not to use the Dewey decimal system, the UDC or
any other kind of existing classification scheme for my index. I
try to be as pragmatic as I can be to classify the information
available on the web. |
| Quite often, I have classified information geographically. The
main unit here is the country. For immediate graphical
identification, I always use the flag of the country next to its
name. |
| Country, in this context, is also a rather pragmatic
term. The term includes members of the United Nations, other
countries that are universally recognized as such (e.g.
Switzerland, Andorra), but also de facto counties that
might not be recognized as such by some important members of the
international community (e.g. Taiwan, the Turkish Republic of
Northern Cyprus and the Palestine Authority). |
| As countries, I have also included territories subject to a
separate administration (e.g. Hong Kong, Macao, Jersey,
Guernsey, Isle of Man, Faeroe Islands, Greenland etc.), overseas
dependencies (e.g. Gibraltar, American Samoa, Mayotte etc.) and
overseas French departments (e.g Martinique, Reunion etc.). |
| I use lower-level subdivisions of countries where this seems
necessary. I am not very consistent in this - for Canada, the
United States and Australia I almost always classify the
information by province or state; for other countries, I do so only when
there is too much information to be provided as one set. |
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| Can I be contacted by e-mail?
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