4 ms·

Why would you put your relative's homepages and email addresses on your homepage? It strikes me as strange, but I'm sure there's a sensible reason.

segmondy 11y ago
You wouldn't understand because you didn't experience the web when it was new and friendly. Before we littered it with cat pictures, we had links to family and friends pages. We had our email on it too before the spam wars.
- rdtsc 11y ago
  Exactly. Also there was no facebook, twitter, type services. If someone got an account some place to create a website (like say a university professor), that was rather special and they would also use it to host their family's pictures, maybe have a section for his wife's cake decorating hobby and so on.
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    I think it was even before Facebook, remember how everything was completely public at first (and by first I meant when it was already launched globally, just before it became a hype). I remember being utterly surprised seeing all girls (I know) phone numbers out in the clear. So I guess we were already not naive anymore about the web.
  - kleer001 11y ago
    Ahhhh! That's the thing. That makes total sense, thanks! It was a matter of age. I was just a kid. No wife with a hobby or digitizer for photos of a family I didn't have. As a kid I was mainly interested in music, porn, games, and weird stuff.
- kleer001 11y ago
  > You wouldn't understand because you didn't experience the web when it was new and friendly. Yes. Yes I did. I bathed in the firehose when it was just dribbles. I was first online in 1993 when I was still in High School. I remember finding porn on people's personal pages. I remember the nascent scribbbles of some of my favorite tech journalists. I remember looking at my url history file of 3 megs and now I know most of those places are gone. I certainly experienced the web when it was fresh. However I didn't experience it in an academic or professional setting. I think that's the delta there, er, the change. Maybe you don't know what a delta is ;)
dredmorbius 11y ago
Homepages as a handy filing page for information you want to reference, particularly in a world where Web search wasn't particularly effective (allowing others to access it), and the size of the Web overall was limited, can be useful. I still maintain local only pages with similar types of information. The Web's changed a bit, and grown some, over the past 25 years. Minsky's been around since well before then.
- kleer001 11y ago
  > Homepages as a handy filing page for information you want to reference, Yes, the literal Etymology OF "Homepage". It was not just the page you wanted to see when you logged on. It was not just the page you wanted people to see first from you. It was where you did all those things online that were important to you. That's why old ones look kinda like lists. Well, that's also a discussion about design, and the evolution of symbols.

segmondy 11y ago

You wouldn't understand because you didn't experience the web when it was new and friendly. Before we littered it with cat pictures, we had links to family and friends pages. We had our email on it too before the spam wars.

rdtsc 11y ago
Exactly. Also there was no facebook, twitter, type services. If someone got an account some place to create a website (like say a university professor), that was rather special and they would also use it to host their family's pictures, maybe have a section for his wife's cake decorating hobby and so on.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  I think it was even before Facebook, remember how everything was completely public at first (and by first I meant when it was already launched globally, just before it became a hype). I remember being utterly surprised seeing all girls (I know) phone numbers out in the clear. So I guess we were already not naive anymore about the web.
- kleer001 11y ago
  Ahhhh! That's the thing. That makes total sense, thanks! It was a matter of age. I was just a kid. No wife with a hobby or digitizer for photos of a family I didn't have. As a kid I was mainly interested in music, porn, games, and weird stuff.
kleer001 11y ago
> You wouldn't understand because you didn't experience the web when it was new and friendly. Yes. Yes I did. I bathed in the firehose when it was just dribbles. I was first online in 1993 when I was still in High School. I remember finding porn on people's personal pages. I remember the nascent scribbbles of some of my favorite tech journalists. I remember looking at my url history file of 3 megs and now I know most of those places are gone. I certainly experienced the web when it was fresh. However I didn't experience it in an academic or professional setting. I think that's the delta there, er, the change. Maybe you don't know what a delta is ;)

dredmorbius 11y ago

Homepages as a handy filing page for information you want to reference, particularly in a world where Web search wasn't particularly effective (allowing others to access it), and the size of the Web overall was limited, can be useful. I still maintain local only pages with similar types of information. The Web's changed a bit, and grown some, over the past 25 years. Minsky's been around since well before then.

kleer001 11y ago
> Homepages as a handy filing page for information you want to reference, Yes, the literal Etymology OF "Homepage". It was not just the page you wanted to see when you logged on. It was not just the page you wanted people to see first from you. It was where you did all those things online that were important to you. That's why old ones look kinda like lists. Well, that's also a discussion about design, and the evolution of symbols.