Are you looking to build more non-commercial websites? Perhaps you have created your own personal website and you’re looking for a new project? How abouut building an: expert website? I’m talking about more than just writing a blog article – an expert site is a whole website – a deep dive – dedicated to something you know a lot about. We had them once upon a time.
I see lots of personal websites and personal blogs both of which I enjoy. But I don’t see as many expert websites like existed in the old Geocities days: these are sites, created by an individual, where he/she shows their expertise on some subject, and I’d like to see these comeback.
People would create a site about whatever they were passionate about and had some knowledge about. There was no Wikipedia, so if you had knowledge about a topic you created a website about it and shared with others. For example, there was no end to: Star Trek sites, TV show episode, character and shooting location guides, fan sites, hobby sites, how to sites, history sites, cooking sites and sites about so many subjects it’s hard to count them all. These websites were more than just animated GIF’s, these sites were the stuff and substance of the Web. They were also the “street fair” of the web as they enlightened and entertained us.
Eventually, for a lot of reasons I won’t get into, Geocities died and most of this information disappeared. Eventually, Wikipedia was born and took over some functions of independent websites like TV episode guides, character guides, book and author guides, actor fansites with bio’s, etc.
But but, we have Wikipedia
I like Wikipedia, but I recognize that Wikipedia is a silo, a fairly benign one, but a silo nonetheless. I use it a lot, but there is a difference between writing on Wikipedia and writing by one voice, (for example) Wikipedia’s TV episode guides are in effect written by committee, not by any one individual. You don’t get the unique insights of each fan or expert on that show when we had 10, 20, 50, 100 different unique guides all on the same TV show.
My point is, I’d like to see more of these sites: non-commercial, independent, created by individuals for the joy of sharing knowledge or arts. Some work well as static sites and blogs or CMS’s might work for others. The Independent Web, (the retroweb, yesterweb, slow web, whatever) needs substance. It needs content (although I hate that word.) And it needs these things to be independent of the silo’s.
Below are some examples.
Examples:
ArcticBoy’s American Motors SIte –
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Thought this was thought-provoking and is once again making me want to create a
short-track speed skating website with all the info that I have but that doesn’t
have a solid source for Wikipedia.
I’ve been running a Myst video game series website for years at MystJourney.com. Throughout that time, I’ve checked Wikipedia for some info I could use on it and was surprised by a lot of it being taken down over the years from Wikipedia because they changed the structure/goal of the pages for it.
Other fansites for the game have also been taken down as well in time. My site has become one of the most complete sources of info that’s still up!
There is certainly something to be said for posting something even if it seems like it’s already in other places. Plus, like you touched on in your post, you have the opportunity to do it in your own unique way!