All this talk about the "domain name system" is a pointless distraction. The information superhighway does not need more abuseable DOT-Stupid site names-- what it needs is at least ONE good road map. What CSTB does, speaks loader than what it says. As their own domain name demonstrates "http://www4.nationalacademies.org" having a stylish site address is in the big internet picture a big non-issue. No significant population of the using public navigates the internet based on domain names. Most users depend on site to site links or on indexes (search engines and directories) to help them find the content they seek. If government, or a group of "information technology experts" sincerely wants to enhance internet value and functionality, the first and only place they need look for correctable broken-ness is at the search industry.
The "Indexing Rackets" have marganalized the internet and stolen from it much of it potential. Hysterical fear of over-regulation and corruption at all levels by undisciplined self-interest, has left the internet with no logical rules regarding internet mapping, indexing, or navigation. The marketing trash of "Website Promotion" and "Search Engine Optimization" have been allowed to replace the ideal of fast, fair, and free access to the world of human creativity. The internet promised more direct, more complete, and more open access, but that promise was broken when rudimentary indexing, or mapping, was allowed to become a competitive business "game" to be played on an uneven field, with no ground rules.
This design flaw is obvious, you need no degree in "information technology" to realize that extortion, blackmail, and bribery are not going to create a credible or better, web index. If I suggested 10 years ago, that we design the web indexing structure so there will be hundreds of indistinguishable indexes, each charging hundreds of dollars to list a site, or more bazaarly we allow keywords to be put up for sale, I would have been rightly despised by the purest internet culture of that time. Now suggesting that we undue this mess with the simple, yet powerfull, reform of universalizing the site submission process, gets me no better a reaction. To the internets inevitable great harm, the dominate internet culture is now made up of unpure, marketing "cause pimps" who see the opportunity to profit in an atmosphere of confusion and standardless uncertainty.
For more see donotgo.com
The "search industry" is just that a industry. With each passing day all the big players become more and more dependent on capturing seekers rather than helping them find what they are looking for. The business plan is to sell you something, and not to give you anything, especially easy access to someone else's store. The fact is without a non-commercial alliterative the same forces that destroyed the great potential of television will close all roads on the internet that are not connected to their toll booths. Content that can't be found is content that might as well not exist. I think the destructive consequence of their being no clean, logical, complete index of the web is slowing the internets growth and if nothing changes no individual or small business will have any incentive to participate as a provider of content. The fact that I can walk to a local business in less time than it takes to find their web-site is a sad and shameful commentary on how pitifully broken the superhighway is.
I have suggested a "fix" for those who give a crud.SEE This
I think the "search industry" needs fixing if the internet is ever going to live up to its potential. The November edition of Danny Sullivan's SEARCH ENGINE REPORT makes the problem pretty evident, and I think my post to this other slashdot subject board offers the solution.
I tryed to post this as a subject with no luck, so I guess I will dump it here.
Web searching isn't what it should or could be because the "indexing industry" can't seem to provide the two required elements: complete coverage and a logical way to extract relevant results-- in the same index.
The big search engines (Fast, Google, Inktomi...) do index a lot of content, but it can be nearly impossible to find a "class" of web site if what you are looking for can't be tied to an exact phrase or exclusive keyword. For example attempting to find all sites that provide a "message board about internet navigation" using a "search engine" is made impractical by the fact that there is no way to filter out the pages with irrelevant references and the fact that there is no common language (keywords or phrase) used on all message board sites to filter in. When Al Gore invented the Internet he apparently didn't realize that different people can describe the same thing using very different words, and that computers aren't likely to like that. Enter the categorized "web directory" (Yahoo, Dmoz, Go, Looksmart, Hotrate,...) to save us from this lack of foresight. Unfortunately, these "humans do it better" alternatives are "edited" by "humans do it slower with arrogance" communities of a selected personality who are more interested in iradicating "evil"--as they sometimes perversely define it--than doing their job of labeling and categorizing. Worse, this ever-growing population of "samey-vertical-directories" all have the insane perception that web page managers have nothing better to do than fill out redundant "add url" forms all day. The result is that the bad under-coverage of the big search engines is magnified some 100 times by the best of these "tip-of-the-iceberg representations" of what's on the internet.
The solution is to make "editor" censorship opaque by opening and centralizing the site submission process and to reduce the noise and chaos of "dumb" search software by standardizing the language used to describe web site content. In my vision of a better World wide web, a site would only have to introduce itself once to the "indexing industry" to be fairly placed in the accessible site universe. The foolish waste of each index or directory doing the same basic "spam check" would be eliminated and done once with greater reliability and objectivity. This public domain list of addable Url's would be simply indexed based on a 5 or 6 keyword description where all but one of the words would have to come from a small pool of precisely defined, clear keywords. No longer would relevant sites be made inaccessible because someone thought a laptop computer was a notebook computer or a insect was a bug. The absence of standardized language and enforceable rules against lying, wrecked the good idea of meta tags --but we still can have the logical navigation they promised.
I believe the creation of a "simple, complete universal index" is a no lose proposition. Unfortunately, I by myself can't make it happen, and as providing this service is not likely to be a for-profit enterprise, few "show me the money" web professionals are offering help. I am confident that the web using public would require little convincing to embrace the idea of cleansing the roots of web navigation of destructive corporate self-interest. The unanswered question is, will they ever have a vote?
I have written more stuff on this subject, and I do have some improved ideas regarding how the index could be structured and regarding spam prevention, but I have decided I am not going to just give them away until I see some hope that change is possible.
Slashdot Mirror
The "Indexing Rackets" have marganalized the internet and stolen from it much of it potential. Hysterical fear of over-regulation and corruption at all levels by undisciplined self-interest, has left the internet with no logical rules regarding internet mapping, indexing, or navigation. The marketing trash of "Website Promotion" and "Search Engine Optimization" have been allowed to replace the ideal of fast, fair, and free access to the world of human creativity. The internet promised more direct, more complete, and more open access, but that promise was broken when rudimentary indexing, or mapping, was allowed to become a competitive business "game" to be played on an uneven field, with no ground rules.
This design flaw is obvious, you need no degree in "information technology" to realize that extortion, blackmail, and bribery are not going to create a credible or better, web index. If I suggested 10 years ago, that we design the web indexing structure so there will be hundreds of indistinguishable indexes, each charging hundreds of dollars to list a site, or more bazaarly we allow keywords to be put up for sale, I would have been rightly despised by the purest internet culture of that time. Now suggesting that we undue this mess with the simple, yet powerfull, reform of universalizing the site submission process, gets me no better a reaction. To the internets inevitable great harm, the dominate internet culture is now made up of unpure, marketing "cause pimps" who see the opportunity to profit in an atmosphere of confusion and standardless uncertainty. For more see donotgo.com
I have suggested a "fix" for those who give a crud.SEE This
I think the "search industry" needs fixing if the internet is ever going to live up to its potential. The November edition of Danny Sullivan's SEARCH ENGINE REPORT makes the problem pretty evident, and I think my post to this other slashdot subject board offers the solution.
I tryed to post this as a subject with no luck, so I guess I will dump it here. Web searching isn't what it should or could be because the "indexing industry" can't seem to provide the two required elements: complete coverage and a logical way to extract relevant results-- in the same index. The big search engines (Fast, Google, Inktomi...) do index a lot of content, but it can be nearly impossible to find a "class" of web site if what you are looking for can't be tied to an exact phrase or exclusive keyword. For example attempting to find all sites that provide a "message board about internet navigation" using a "search engine" is made impractical by the fact that there is no way to filter out the pages with irrelevant references and the fact that there is no common language (keywords or phrase) used on all message board sites to filter in. When Al Gore invented the Internet he apparently didn't realize that different people can describe the same thing using very different words, and that computers aren't likely to like that. Enter the categorized "web directory" (Yahoo, Dmoz, Go, Looksmart, Hotrate,...) to save us from this lack of foresight. Unfortunately, these "humans do it better" alternatives are "edited" by "humans do it slower with arrogance" communities of a selected personality who are more interested in iradicating "evil"--as they sometimes perversely define it--than doing their job of labeling and categorizing. Worse, this ever-growing population of "samey-vertical-directories" all have the insane perception that web page managers have nothing better to do than fill out redundant "add url" forms all day. The result is that the bad under-coverage of the big search engines is magnified some 100 times by the best of these "tip-of-the-iceberg representations" of what's on the internet. The solution is to make "editor" censorship opaque by opening and centralizing the site submission process and to reduce the noise and chaos of "dumb" search software by standardizing the language used to describe web site content. In my vision of a better World wide web, a site would only have to introduce itself once to the "indexing industry" to be fairly placed in the accessible site universe. The foolish waste of each index or directory doing the same basic "spam check" would be eliminated and done once with greater reliability and objectivity. This public domain list of addable Url's would be simply indexed based on a 5 or 6 keyword description where all but one of the words would have to come from a small pool of precisely defined, clear keywords. No longer would relevant sites be made inaccessible because someone thought a laptop computer was a notebook computer or a insect was a bug. The absence of standardized language and enforceable rules against lying, wrecked the good idea of meta tags --but we still can have the logical navigation they promised. I believe the creation of a "simple, complete universal index" is a no lose proposition. Unfortunately, I by myself can't make it happen, and as providing this service is not likely to be a for-profit enterprise, few "show me the money" web professionals are offering help. I am confident that the web using public would require little convincing to embrace the idea of cleansing the roots of web navigation of destructive corporate self-interest. The unanswered question is, will they ever have a vote? I have written more stuff on this subject, and I do have some improved ideas regarding how the index could be structured and regarding spam prevention, but I have decided I am not going to just give them away until I see some hope that change is possible.