Talk:GeoCities/Archive 1

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Geocities Japan

"GeoCities Japan was based on Japanese culture." -- What the heck is that supposed to mean? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.66.219.121 (talk) 19:51, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused about this as well -- why is it that the URL cited in the infobox is the one with a '.jp' TLD? Not clearly explained in article. --ButterSoda (talk) 01:09, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

I removed the sentence. The quoted page just said that it was "centered around Japanese culture", which is fairly natural seeing that all the contributors are Japanese. The TOS weren't any different from the main GeoCities.—Austriacus (talk) 06:14, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

FTP section

I don't believe that the FTP section belongs in an encyclopedia article. In particular, I don't believe that the advertising for a particular ad-removal service belongs in here. I am ALL for ad-removal. Which is why to be consistent I am all for removing people's ads from Wikipedia. Jdavidb 13:49, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Abuse by spammers

I wonder if there should not be a section on the abuse of GeoCities accounts by spammers in this article. I don't know about anybody else, but my primary exposure to GeoCites now-a-days is as a host for spamvertised crap. N0YKG 15:49, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

First?

I had a website way back when it was called "GeoPages". The only freebie alternative I recall was one called "Look Up". Was this one the first? --Billpg 12:41, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Warn people?

Should we warn people that Geocities isn't a very good host and there are better ones? Should we offer advice in wikipedia?

We can't offer advice as we have to remain neutral. --File:Ottawa flag.png Spinboy 04:52, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
be bold dogma mandates offering advice as long as appropriate weasel words are used, eg some critics charge... etc
See WP:NPOV. --lE☺N2323 16:36, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Warn people?

hmmm, giving advice isn't neutral. I guess we shouldn't. Zhanster 00:23, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, giving advice in the "you should" form is not okay, but... if any well-sourced statements regarding GeoCities' functionality or lack thereof were to convince people to use or not to use GeoCities, well that couldn't be helped. Shinobu (talk) 14:16, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

AOL/Geocities hate

This had nothing to do with pre-1990s internet users, the section is heavily biased. Not to mention I'm not sure The reputation has largely faded now, as it was mostly dependent upon the opinions of older internet users, whom became more and more of a minority after the late 1990s. is accurate, if anything I've only seen Geocities mocked increasingly over the past 6 years Sherurcij (talk) (Terrorist Wikiproject) 20:45, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

  • I also disagree with the validity of the 'faded reputation' statement; it sounds like it is based upon anecdotal evidence. GeoCities was -- and still is, to the best of my knowledge, known for two things: free, limited web hosting and an overwhelming number of amateurish web pages. A mention of GeoCities to any web developer who has been around for a few years will likely trigger a conversation about horrendous web design, abuse of the <BLINK> tag and animated GIFs galore. --cdjaco 18:05, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Suburbs

Could someone please mention that the old geocities neighbourhoods were divided into suburbs, too? When the neighbourhoods became full, they started to add suburbs to the neighbourhood. EG: http://www.geocities.com/neighbourhood/1234 and then http://www.geocities.com/neighbourhood/suburb/1234

Second that.

I've removed 'Broadway', since it was there at launch but never used for user accounts, and also added ResearchTriangle because that one was added later but used extensively.

If someone wants the full list of active geocities neighbourhoods for Wikipedia use please contact me via j@ww.com

see 

 http://www.reocities.com/

For more information about all this.

best regards, 

   Jacques Mattheij

77.165.209.212 (talk) 21:22, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I added Broadway back since it was used for accounts and even had its own suburbs. Here is a small list of some I found without looking hard:

173.50.233.227 (talk) 15:54, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Reputation

The reputation section is all total POV and if it isn't referenced I see no reason to keep it in the article. - Mjg0503 03:18, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I've removed the section - Mjg0503 15:41, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

spam

since the website is free we're at the mercy of geocities and ther ads and spam mine is new and when i show it off an ad show up

p.s. should i add my site to the list


Category for Bubble Buyout Boondoggles?

Seems like Geocities 3.6 billion $ buyout by Yahoo has to rank up there as one of the biggest boondoggles of the dot com bubble. Is there some appropriate category for this? Is there any information as to how much Yahoo lost on the deal?

I guess this is probably the closest: Dot-com_company#List_of_well-known_dot-bombs. Not sure it deserves to be split into a seperate section though Robin (talk) 15:18, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Another topic for the article: what is the present 2007 state of Geocities, is it widely used or hardly used?

Another topic for the article: Google appears not to index it, why is this? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.202.248.81 (talk) 01:15, 12 March 2007 (UTC).

Litigation section

The litigation section is unreferenced. If this were a BLP, it would be deleted. What about a corporation? Shouldn't its reputation matter?

An anon removed half the section. I put it back as a default, but I see where he might be coming from. Shalom (Hello • Peace) 18:44, 18 February 2008 (UTC)


History 4th paragraph

Could be clearer. Refers to initial offering price then however it was bought for some $3 billion odd. Would need to know what the price was compared to IPO or drop the however. 18:20, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Bandwith limits on free accounts

I added some info about the introduction of bandwith limits to GeoCities free accounts because I think it was an important cause of the loss of popularity of the GeoCities pages and hosting services. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ginta suou (talk • contribs) 03:51, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

GEOCITIES HAS DIED

Today geocities has lost all of the pages that were on their servers. Unless you up-dated your pages yesterday, today all of them will have gone. They have changed their log-in details and I have lost 10 years work in 24 hours. That wasn't enough time to save everything and transfer it to another server, and anyway they didn't give any of us any notice. Geocities has changed and left behind hundreds of website builders now without sites. 82.25.230.19 (talk) 09:56, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

My two small websites were not lost--I didn't even know there was a problemJimtitus (talk) 12:40, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Back to Reputation

I added two sentences about the fact that some organizations such as Wikipedia block or discourage access to Geocities. (I know first hand because a link I had added to the Glenn Dale Citizens Association in an article about Glenn Dale, Maryland was automatically deleted with a note explaining that the policy is to delete links to Geocities.) I was not sure how to reference that policy, the note linked me to this page. I'm assuming there is something better than linking to explanation that was inserted into the jimtitus page. Jimtitus (talk) 12:40, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

And the reasons I reverted that statement were:
  1. It was unsourced original research.
  2. Wikipedia doesn't have a policy of "blocking or removing links to Geocities pages". Rather it has a policy on reliable sources which the majority of geocities sites fail. Any person can publish anything they like (within Yahoo's ToS) on a Geocities site with no proof that it is true. However, if a website exhibits academic/journalistic rigour and is fully referenced to reliable/peer-reviewed sources, but just happens to be hosted on Geocities, then a link/reference is fine.

dramatic (talk) 00:46, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Community Leaders

It surprises me that CL's are only mentioned passingly in one sentance... similar to AOL, we did a lot of work back in the day. After Geo went public, they gave us all 10 shares of stock, for a handsome profit. Granted, as mentioned in the article we all rebelled over the TOS. But I would think if the AOL ones can get a mention... (don't know if this was in a previous version. A wave of nostaliga hit me today... was a CL/Co-Liaison/Forum Monitor/Mentor back then). mysticalone27 (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 23:20, 21 January 2009 (UTC).

I was not a CL, but I was going to be. After creating my page a CL signed my guest book and sent me an e-mail asking if I wanted to be a CL (I think I visited the help room several times too) and ran me through a few tests on "What is wrong with this webpage". I ended up dropping out because I realized I would not be able to devote the time needed to do the job. Knowing what I know about them, I agree that they played a big part in the site as a whole, but I am not sure how they could be mentioned other than in passing without sounding like original research or too unencyclopedic. — CobraWiki ( jabber | stuff ) 07:18, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

It shouldn't be hard to find Wikipedia-approved sources for statements about the community leaders. Wikipedia might not be the place to say everything I would like to say about what they did for GeoCities and what they meant to me, but I don't see why we couldn't at least describe their well-documented functions. I'll be doing research on that as part of some GeoCities heritage projects. Actually, I think they deserve a page of their own.--JimHabegger (talk) 04:26, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Template:Geocities Heartland suburb Archive nav box

This nav box consists only of external links to Archive.org pages. I have moved it from the middle of the article to the nav box area under external links. I am not sure that it complies with policy on external links, particularly "Long lists of links are not acceptable" and would like to get some other editor input as to whether it should be retained or deleted. - Ahunt (talk) 11:58, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

In clicking through the links in this box they are all broken links - the archives often contain copies of the pages, but then the pages are just a field of broken links. I really don't see the point to this nav box. - Ahunt (talk) 14:21, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
Lacking any explanation of the utility of a nav box of dead-end external links I will remove it from the article. I won't, however, nominate the nav box template for deletion yet, in case it can be adapted for fixed up and reused. - Ahunt (talk) 12:09, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Not closed yet!

I realize that all the Yahoo published information said that GeoCities websites would be deleted on 26 Oct 09 and the article reflects that, but here it is the 27th and the Geocities websites are still up, like this one. Does anyone have any information on this? The main problem is that the article now indicates that GeoCities is past tense, but it isn't and is therefore inaccurate. - Ahunt (talk) 12:54, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

You are correct that most, or perhaps all, GeoCities sites are still up. It is not all that surprising to me, as these sort of things rarely happen "on time." Most likely it will just start disappearing at some random time in the near future (when someone hits the delete button). --ThaddeusB (talk) 14:54, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
And if it takes weeks or months, Wikipedia would still use past tense because that's what Yahoo! decided to say? Wikipedia should reflect the present, not the "soon future according to press releases". -82.80.27.94 (talk) 17:34, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
It does present a problem as the article isn't accurate. I shall add a note to the article, which can be removed when they do come down. I just checked and my sites are still up! - Ahunt (talk) 18:49, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
Looks like the websites are all gone now and the text has been amended to reflect that! - Ahunt (talk) 20:53, 27 October 2009 (UTC)


That's not correct, yes, a large number of the sites is offline already (you get a 410) but I'm still running 300 crawlers and retrieving plenty of content. I'll report back when they're *really* down. 77.165.209.212 (talk) 05:09, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
update, now it is really dead, at least for me. Chances are this is different in different regions because of the way yahoo does load balancing or regional caching. 77.165.209.212 (talk) 07:07, 28 October 2009 (UTC)


Ok, for what it's worth, 600,000+ copies of geocities users' homepages have been restored, we're working hard on the remainder, it's as close as a 'drop in' replacement as I could make, just change the 'g' in geocities.com to an 'r' to make 'reocities.com' and your links should work as they did before. Jacques Mattheij 77.165.209.212 (talk) 11:21, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Nope doesn't work at all "page not found". - Ahunt (talk) 13:58, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
It also does not work for me, at least not yet. I get this "http://reocites.com/?404=Y" when I enter "http://reocites.com/notnortel". However, I do believe reocities should be commended for trying to fix a wrong.Ottawahitech (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:39, 4 November 2009 (UTC).
Not to mention the copyright issues. --ThaddeusB (talk) 14:16, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Better to save the data then solve the copyright issues than vv. As for recovery we are now at 1.8M accounts, and still restoring more JM 77.165.209.212 (talk) 07:06, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
Really? To publish people's works for whatever reasons without authorisation is breaching copyright. I want my pages removed from geociti.es and am having a lot of trouble finding who to write to to have this fixed. The owner of the website at geociti.es is also hidden in a domain search so there is no contact details easily found.At least the guy from reocities was easy to contact and took my pages off as asked. Anyone publishing pages where the copyright is held by someone else should be prepared for some irate people asking to have those pages removed. I moved my pages to my own server but left a copy on my geocities site knowing geocities was going to die.. I just wanted to be there at the end. Never did I think people would start copying my pages.. I wrote one essay on there when I was 15, it means so much to me. Take my pages down please geociti.es, you have no right to them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Anitakt (talk • contribs) 17:32, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

XKCD tribute

I have re-added the line about the XKCD tribute, which was removed by Lint of Death, without explanation. I don't want to cause an edit war, but I do think that the fact that Randall Munroe chose to change the XKCD homepage so drastically and meticulously for the closure of GeoCities says something valuable about the prominence of GeoCities' role on the Internet and its legacy in Internet culture. If you disagree (and/or remove it again) please discuss/justify it here. Brad Gibbons (talk) 04:42, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

In terms of Wikipedia, if the xkcd reform serves as a "testament" on anything, it's the neverending wave of vandalism by fanboys who think this entire site should geared towards it. It's a sad state of affairs, but the xkcd community has consistently displayed arrogance and complete disdain for Wikipedia's purposes, using it as a tool to bring publicity to the comic and fulfill their ego and need for self-assurance, since it's so important to have a mention of their favourite webcomic on Wikipedia. I see no reason to believe this case is any different; xkcd wasn't the only site to make a GeoCities parody, so if it deserves mention, it should be placed alongside all the other parodies that were ever done. SirMustapha (talk) 12:41, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
I agree, non-notable tribute. - Ahunt (talk) 12:49, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
WP:XKCD. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 22:11, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
Well that settles it when there is already a page saying "don't do this"! - Ahunt (talk) 22:20, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Rewrite tagged

User:92.136.52.125 has tagged this article for rewrite, but has not explained what they perceive the problem as. Please explain where you think improvements are needed so some steps can be taken to address your tag. - Ahunt (talk) 11:26, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Since no explanation as to why this tag was added has been forthcoming, no improvements can be made, so the tag has been removed. - Ahunt (talk) 14:38, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Wiki articles

We should make sure all geocities links on wiki redirect to archive --Gary123 (talk) 07:03, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

How come some pages are still up?

I just saw this one: http://www.geocities.com/heartland/7202/advent.html

Does anyone know how it's possible that that link works? Carlo (talk) 23:45, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Weird! My GeoCities sites are gone, but that one is still up! I am guessing they forgot to purge one server. I am sure it will get overwritten in time. - Ahunt (talk) 01:30, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
Web pages of GeoCities Plus customers were not removed. "Yahoo! GeoCities Plus customers: Although GeoCities has closed, your friends and family can still view your web site as usual." What happened to my GeoCities web address? —Preceding unsigned comment added by JimHabegger (talk • contribs) 00:32, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
That makes sense, I guess they are paying for hosting. - Ahunt (talk) 01:46, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
The whole message can also be read at Why did GeoCities close? 205.189.94.12 (talk) 22:02, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
Here's another message by Yahoo. "Yahoo! GeoCities Plus customers: Your web site files have not been removed, but you can no longer access them through your GeoCities Control Panel. Instead we've made it simple for you to upgrade to Yahoo! Web Hosting, at the same price you pay for your today for your GeoCities Plus service." What if I still want a website? 205.189.94.12 (talk) 22:02, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Geocities-izer

The Geocities-izer - http://wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/ - may be worth mentioning in this wiki article; I'm not sure. 188.28.173.127 (talk) 07:46, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

www.geocities.ws

A 'replacement' Geocities was created at:

http://www.geocities.ws

Could this be mentioned on the main page? 

(talk) 22:00, 22 January 2012 (UTC)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.148.13.8 (talk)

beginning year

On first paragraph the year is 1994 and on history paragraph 1995. what's true?Uziel302 (talk) 13:21, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

The S-1 form filed by GeoCities with the SEC on June 12, 1998 [1] says: "Founded in December 1994 as Beverly Hills Internet, the Company first launched an online community of six neighborhoods in January 1995." So BHI was incorporated in December 1994, but there were no "neighborhoods" where people could set up their own websites until January 1995. The date 1994 looks like a date of interest to someone who wants to chronicle how the business was established, but it seems there was no real precursor of GeoCities on the Internet until 1995. NameIsRon (talk) 14:54, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Wh the suddden interest?

I am just curious if anyone knows, or can speculate, why there was a jump in daily views on August 10, 2013. Thanks in advance. XOttawahitech (talk) 20:23, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

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