Talk:World Wide Web/Archive 1

message: The below is copied from Tim Berners-Lee home-page at the w3c site...
"In 1989, he proposed a global hypertext project, to be known as the World Wide Web. Based on the earlier "Enquire" work, it was designed to allow people to work together by combining their knowledge in a web of hypertext documents. He wrote the first World Wide Web server, "httpd", and the first client, "WorldWideWeb" a what-you-see-is-what-you-get hypertext browser/editor which ran in the NeXTStep environment. This work was started in October 1990, and the program "WorldWideWeb" first made available within CERN in December, and on the Internet at large in the summer of 1991"
My reading of this is that the www is the ineraction with hypertext data, through the server/browser relationship. (This would include active X items - Flash player imediately comes to mind)
An internet is a more general term for a set of interconnected computer networks that are connected by internetworking. The largest of which the public are familiar with, and is called simply the internet.
While people may use other elements of the Internet like POP3 or FTP (whether through a HTML page or application) these methods of data transfer are related to an internet not the WWW, which more specificaly describes the way in which people can use these technologies (ie yahoo is a hypertext front end to POP3/SMTP)
M.J.Ingram 20040923
: The word "abstract" was added to the first sentence (...an abstract network...), with the comment "Clarifying that the world wide web is a logical network rather than a single physical".  That doesn't "clarify" anything, and I disagree that it's even true.  What people mean when they say "World Wide Web" is specifically the one to which Yahoo and every other site they know about is attached, and that's a large network of physical computers connected by real wires and fiber and other means.  When I type "http://www.yahoo.com" into my browser, I am sending messages to routers to locate a specific piece of hardware owned by a specific company.  What's "abstract" about that?  --Lee Daniel Crocker
What it means is that the connectivity graph of the WWW is an abstract graph which is at a layer above the actual physical connectivity "graph" of the Internet itself. The two are in no way congruent: nodes which are separated by many other nodes in the actual physical network can be neighbours via hyper-links. It is quite properly, therefore, described as an "abstract" network. Noel (talk) 06:00, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Regarding the definition of the WWW.

message: Didn't the idea of the world wide web come from the military?  Didn't they want to create a communication web that wouldn't be able to be brought down if our country was bombed with nukes?  The government was concerned that if the center of our country was bombed there would be no way the east coast could communicate with the west coast.  So they came up with the idea of having our communications in a grid or web pattern.  If the center of our country was struck we could still communicate by going around the center using this new pattern.  This was what I was taught, but I am not going to include it until someone varifies this b/c it could be wrong.
---Grant T
: that's the net not the web -- Tarquin 23:57 Feb 10, 2003 (UTC)
: Right. The military funding for the Internet had nothing to do with anything like the web (except rather indirectly, because some of Englebart's funding came from DARPA many moons ago). Noel (talk) 06:00, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  Also, while this is often claimed to be the origin of the Internet, it only contains a grain of truth.  Early research on decentralized packet networks did in part arise from concerns about keeping a military communications network running under physical attack.  But ARPANET, which is generally held to be the seed from which the Internet grew, wasn't actually intended for that purpose; it was just a communications network for ARPA research centers. --24.147.149.53 13:58, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text: Yes and no. The ARPANet is not the Internet, and the latter had different goals, some of which were military applications. See Talk:Internet#Internet and Nuclear Warfare survivability for more. Noel (talk) 06:00, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: WWW Origins

message: I wish I could think of an appropriate way to mention in this article a curious fact that was pointed out by Douglas Adams (and probably recognized by many others): "WWW" is possibly the only acronym in the English language that takes three times as long to say as the phrase that it's "short" for. :) -- Wapcaplet 12:48 11 Jun 2003 (UTC)
: This is an ever-annoying fact!  Work it in somehow.  I always say "dub dub dub" to ameliorate the problem.
: That's probably the funniest thing I have heard today. It's funny because it's true. In Finnish, of course, we tend not to make a distinction between "v" and "w", so we just say "vee vee vee". 85.76.152.179 18:33, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Dis-optimizing initialism

message: I have listed this article on Wikipedia:Featured article removal candidates. Rationale is provided on that page. Fredrik | talk 19:56, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: This article has several problems. Parts of it read way too much like an essay, with clear instances of POV and/or original, subjective interpretation ("these bold visions", "beyond text", also see "Publishing web pages" comment above). The overall structure is poor; the order and choice of sections seems arbitrary. For example, the "Java and Javascript" section should rather be called "Dynamic content", or something similar, and cover more than these two particular technologies. The section says nothing useful about what dynamic content is and what it is supposed to be good for. The "Sociological implications" section is vague and incomplete at best. Poor writing: many one-sentence paragraphs, missing wikilinks. Sub-standard choice of images. And perhaps the worst problem: this article is blatantly incomprehensive; there is almost nothing on types of websites, search engines, organization of the web and websites, the web's role in commerce, and probably many things I didn't think about. In my opinion, this article could use a rewrite from the ground up.
--Fredrik | talk 02:00, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Flaws in article, nominated for FA removal

message: Don't we need to mention Citeseer ? -- Sundar 07:02, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)
: Yeah, I think it would be good. (Plus that new "Google for academics" thingy too, maybe? Go for it! Noel (talk) 21:30, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citeseer 

message: Does the following, from the section Publishing web pages not read like original research or an essay? I've italicised sections that do in my view. I've commented in indented bold italic.
----
The web is available to individuals outside mass media. In order to "publish" a web page, one does not have to go through a publisher or other media institution, and potential readers could be found in all corners of the globe. To some this represents an opportunity to enhance democracy by giving voice to alternative and minority views. Others took it as a path to anarchy and unrestrained freedom of expression. Yet others took it as a sign that a hierarchically organized society of which mass media is a symptomatic part, will be replaced by a so-called network society.
In addition, hypertext seemed to promote non-hierarchical and non-linear ways of expression and thinking. Unlike books and documents, hypertext does not have a linear order from beginning to end. It is not broken down into the hierarchy of chapters, sections, subsections, etc. This is reminiscent of the idea of Marshall McLuhan that new media change people's perception of the world, mentality, and way of thinking. While not unique to the web, hypertext in this sense is closely related to the notion of "death of author" and intertextuality in structuralist literary theory.
These bold visions are not fully realized yet. We can find both supporting and countering aspects of web usage.
First, regarding the increased global unity, it is true that many different kinds of information are now available on the web, and for those who wish to know other societies, their cultures and peoples, it became easier. When travelling in a foreign country or a remote town, one might be able to find some information about the place on the web, especially if the place is in one of developed countries. Local newspapers, government publications, and other materials are easier to access, and therefore the variety of information obtainable with the same effort may be said to have increased, for the users of the Internet.
At the same time, there are some obvious limitations. The web is so far a very text-centered medium, and those who are illiterate cannot make much use of it.
:Text to speech? Images? The websites using a few bright graphics and words to link people to images, music, video, feeds?
Even among the literate, usage of a computer may or may not be easy enough. It has been known during the late 1990s, though with ample exceptions, that web users are dominantly young males in college or with a college degree.
:References? Can this assertion be backed up?
Now the trend has been changing and females and the elderly are also using the web.
:Ref?
Level of education and income are related to the web use, some think (See also: Digital divide).
:Who? Ref.
Another significant obstacle is the language. :Make a more qualified assertion
Although some websites are available in multiple languages, many are in the local language only. Also, not all software supports all special characters, and RTL languages. These factors would challenge the notion that the World Wide Web will bring a unity to the world.
Second, the increased opportunity to publish materials is certainly observable in the countless personal pages, as well as pages by families, small shops, etc., facilitated by the emergence of free web hosting services.
Yet not a small part of those pages seem to be either prematurely abandoned or one-time practice. Very few of those pages, even when they are well-developed, are popular. When it comes to the expression of ideas and provision of information, it seems that the major media organizations and those companies who became major organizations through their online operations are still favored by the dominant majority. In addition, the Web is not necessarily a tool for political self-education and deliberation. The most popular uses of the Web include searching and downloading of pornography, which perhaps have very limited effect in improving democracy. The most intensively accessed web pages include the document detailing the former President Bill Clinton's sexual misconduct with Monica Lewinsky, as well as the lingerie fashion show by Victoria's Secret. In sum, both in terms of writers and readers, the Web is not popularly used for democracy. While this is not enough to categorically reject the possibility of the Web as a tool for democracy, the effect so far seems to be smaller than some of the expectations for a quite simple reason, lack of interest and popularity. Anarchistic freedom of expression may be enjoyed by some, but many web hosting companies have developed their acceptable use policy over time, sometimes prohibiting some sensitive and potentially illegal expressions. And again, those expressions may not reach a great many. The web is still largely a hierarchical place, some argue.
:A long series of unreferenced assertions, POV statements, and original commentary
Third, regarding non-linear and non-hierarchical structure of the Web, the effect of those on people's perception and psychology are still largely unknown.
:What? - i.e. expand/reference debate, or cut
Some argue that our culture is changing to that of postmodernity, which is closely related to non-linear and non-hierarchical way of thinking, being, and even social organization. Yet the counter evidences are available as well. Among the most notable would be the existence of web directories and search engines.
:Again, an linked assertion (check with postmodernism), and some unclear mumbo-jumbo.
Those sites often provide navigations to most popular sites to the visitors. In addition, it is quite obvious that many web sites are organized according to a simple hierarchy, having the "home page" at the top. At least the present state of the Web and web users seem to suggest the change has not been as great as envisioned by some.
:This "hierarchical" debate is here for what purpose? Cleanup or remove it.
----
Does anyone wish to tackle this section? I'm removing it en-masse until someone sieves through it. It's really quite diabolical.
zoney ♣ talk 23:39, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Original research 

message: Any protests against having this section removed?  I feel that pronunciation is outside the scope of the article, is largely irrelevant for those not in English-speaking countries, and that the article is long enough as it is.
What tricks various browsers try or don't try in order to resolve an address definitely does not belong.  I suppose some mention of the "www prefix" and its decline might still be appropriate. (or maybe it should go in a larger context along with ftp, mail, ns, and other prefixes, dedicated boxes at company headquarters, etc)
-- magetoo 10:13, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation of "www" section 

message: It is important to make clear what the www is. The first paragraph is factual wrong, URI has a much broader meaning and is more related to Internet than www. The misconception is also reflected on the usage of the title web radio rather than internet radio.
: OK, I've fixed the redirecting link to internet radio.  Regarding the other issue, although I didn't write it, I'm personally quite happy with the definition of WWW in the first para.  Remember, it is a definition of the WWW, not that of a URI.  Sure, URIs have wider applicability than their use by the WWW, but there's no doubt that the WWW depends on URIs.  I read an article somewhere where Tim B-L made that point in an interview, but it was in print and I don't think I can find a reference now.  The point to be made is that the WWW is a set of interconnected resources (e.g. documents (HTML, text, pdf etc), images, multimedia feeds etc) interconnected via hyperlinks that depend on URIs.  The internet is a set of interconnected computer networks, interconnected by Internet Protocol, routers, wires, radio links etc.  These are not interchangeable terms or interchangeable concepts.  How can we say that more clearly than that para already does?  --Nigelj 22:10, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Terminology 

message: Who are "No-WWW" and why do they have any authority to deprecate anything? Uman
They don't have any special authority, they are just spreading their ideas --84.60.107.6 15:55, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  No-WWW 

message: The content added from the ON reference remains in this article, but the reference has been removed. This action is disputed and a conversation is ongoing here.  Uriah923 06:19, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Value of ON content and quality of reference 

message: Can I just say that I think this page is not as bad as others have stated. 82.32.52.223 13:19, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This article, featured on the main page today, has several problems. Parts of this article read way too much like an essay, with clear instances of POV and/or original, subjective interpretation ("these bold visions", "beyond text", also see "Publishing web pages" comment on talk). The overall structure is poor; the order and choice of sections seems arbitrary. For example, the "Java and Javascript" section should rather be called "Dynamic content", or something similar, and cover more than these two particular technologies. The section says nothing useful about what dynamic content is and what it is supposed to be good for. The "Sociological implications" section is vague and incomplete at best. Poor writing: many one-sentence paragraphs, missing wikilinks. Sub-standard choice of images. And perhaps the worst problem: this article is blatantly incomprehensive; there is almost nothing on types of websites, search engines, organization of the web and websites, the web's role in commerce, and probably many things I didn't think about. In my opinion, this article could use a rewrite from the ground up. Fredrik | talk 18:35, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Improving this article 

message: the graphic violates wikipedias policies about not being self-referential. this article is about the www, there is no reason why we should display it as revolving around wikipedia. 69.22.42.35 20:59, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  graphic 

message: I have submitted the article HTTP cookie for peer review (I am posting this notice here as this article is related). Comments are welcome here: Wikipedia:Peer review/HTTP cookie/archive1. Thanks. - Liberatore(T) 16:57, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  HTTP cookie 

message: Coolcaesar claims that the name of the librarian who coined the term "surfing the Web" is Jean Armour Polly.
There's a "netiquette" site that someone tried to refer to by an one-word article Net-mom called Net-Mom], where the owner signs herself Jean Armour Polly (see bottom of front page).
Her biography on the site claims that she's the inventor of the phrase "surfing the Internet".
So I'd say that his point is documented. I'll write her a page.
--Alvestrand 06:51, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jean Armo(u?)r Polly 

message: I think it should be a little clearer that internet hypertext appeared in Gopher before the invention of WWW.  I believe WAIS also predates WWW.  The "brilliant breakthrough" paragraph makes an incorrect statement in this regard.
It should also be mentioned that HTML is based on SGML, with a link to that mark-up language.
:Gopher wasn't hypertext. It had directories (lists of terms) and files (text). No links within the texts. WAIS was a search tool; again, not hypertext. Alvestrand 22:31, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe the Origins section was actually better a couple of years ago, though I'm not 100% sure.  The problem is that this article is vandalized on an hourly basis, and it's often edited by inexperienced, immature, or uneducated users, so the article as a whole is in very bad shape.  --Coolcaesar 19:49, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origins 

message: Should “World-Wide Web” rather be written with a hyphen? -- Wegner8 17:09, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Might have been a reasonable suggestion in 1992, but now it's too late - it's been firmly established that it's non-hyphenated. --Alvestrand 17:19, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Negligent usage takes precedence over rules and consistency. This is how languages deteriorate: Latin to Italian, English to AE and beyond. Wegner8 (talk) 07:26, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: “World-Wide Web” with a hyphen?

message: I have been somewhat bold and added a subsection to origins to briefly discuss earlier similar information delivery technologies such as the ones mentioned in the section head just above. I think what I added could be substantially improved and encourage all and sundry to do so
* My terminology (system/information delivery/...) may be off - I am not an expert in the field
* Maybe this is not the right article for it, perhaps History of the Internet instead.
-- Martinp 22:25, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please don't do that.  No intelligent person confuses videotex with the Web today.  Of course, in 2001, British Telecom had the bright idea of trying to claim that one of its old videotex patents encompassed hypertext and sued Prodigy (now part of SBC, which is now AT&T).  The case never got to trial, since the defense got it kicked out on summary judgment because videotex and the Web are so different.  The biggest difference (which is what the BT case ultimately turned on) is the fact that the Web and the Internet are both decentralized while videotex was always heavily centralized.--Coolcaesar 06:36, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, I'm going to be bold and delete the section.  There is no reason to have a discussion of videotex in the World Wide Web article, which is way too long as is.  There are already numerous articles on videotex and the various videotex systems on Wikipedia.--Coolcaesar 06:37, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not trying to have a discussion of videotex, or thinking that they get confused. I just think that it's good to mention and point to other technologies which tried to do something similar (which is e.g. Nabu network not just videotex) even though they failed. Just as it is interesting to mention various forks of prehistoric humans (e.g. Neanderthals) in a history of human evolution, even though we are not directly descended from them and would not confuse them. But I won't force the issue -- it was a bold suggestion from someone who was searching where to hang Nabu Network, which has some if marginal interest -- though I'd appreciate alternative suggestions on where else in the whole tree of evolution of the internet/www/networked information/interactive information exchange it ought be mentioned in. Martinp 19:02, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Minitel]], [[Telidon]], [[Nabu Network]] 

message: The article kicks off with the following text. If its intended to be a definition, its wrong; if its introductory, its misleading:
:WWW is The complete set of documents residing on all Internet servers that use the HTTP protocol, accessible to users via a simple point-and-click system.
The errors are:
*information,not documents
*not restricted to http
*need not be acessible to users
*need not (and often does not) use point and click
--Nantonos 20:48, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I may be quite late to respond now, but you're right. I mostly use the keyboard (not 'point-and-click with a mouse) and the Web was often used over FTP when HTTP support was not much. And Berners-Lee always emphasizes semantics, wich is data, not documents. Web sites still need to be acessible to someone, but that doesn't need to be everyone in the world, but the term web (or Web) can also refer to a "web of hypertext/media documents on local basis (not World-Wide), acessible only to the locals. This can for example be hosted on a MAN. Web browsers should support these. SvartMan (talk) 20:05, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Inaccurate definition

message: === text based===
:Prior to the release of Mosaic, the Web was text based 
No. The first Web browser, on the NeXT, had both text and graphics (although not mixed together). The second one, because not everyone had a high-end workstation, ran on basic text erminals. Other browsers, such as Viola,  followed. What Mosaic did was to allow graphics to be displayed inline in the text. Unfortunately, Marc based the Mosaic code on the widely available dumb terminal browsers rather than the more fully featured ones. --Nantonos 20:57, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: More errors

message: :Prior to the release of Mosaic, the Web was text based 
No. The first Web browser, on the NeXT, had both text and graphics (although not mixed together). The second one, because not everyone had a high-end workstation, ran on basic text erminals. Other browsers, such as Viola,  followed. What Mosaic did was to allow graphics to be displayed inline in the text. Unfortunately, Marc based the Mosaic code on the widely available dumb terminal browsers rather than the more fully featured ones. --Nantonos 20:57, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  text based

message: I haven't been following this article closely and I didn't realize it has become such a MESS.  I just reviewed the article history carefully.  Major screw-ups include Ryguillian's 2004 replacement of what was the technically correct definition with the W3C's politically correct one (see ), and severe vandalism in October 2005 by user 202.124.147.147 (see
) and others shortly thereafter.  I suggest a revert back to the last good version at 9 October 2005. Does everyone else concur on this? --Coolcaesar 23:22, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's hard from your links to see what you're referring to - only the middle one shows a diff.  I haven't been following this article much either but I would be wary of a wholesale revert of over 7 months' work - there must have been some worthwhile additions in that time too, I would have thought. --Nigelj 09:31, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

text: I also disagree with reverting to such an old version, although it was more coherent. Thanks for finding some gems in earlier versions; you should bring the deleted paragraphs back to life. Nantonos also makes some good points in the discussion above. I'm glad to see that some people care, so let's go ahead and clear the mess together! -- JFG 23:03, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Why this article is a mess

message: Recent comments have encouraged me to create a major rewrite proposal. This article needs some love: come and submit your ideas! -- JFG 04:57, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rewrite proposal 

message: This guy in his vanity article claims to have co-invented WWW.
Please somebody disuade him.  Mhym 20:34, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Piotr Blass 

message: I once heard that the BBC found out that they had some obscure patent on linking between files that happened to cover the WWW, but decided not to claim rights to the WWW. Any truth in that? DirkvdM 07:00, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Never heard of it.  The only British patent I've heard of is the British Telecom patent, but a district court judge in New York dismissed the BT case against SBC and BT decided to not appeal.  --Coolcaesar 02:15, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  BBC 

message: This may have something to do with the phrase, if someone wants to do the research:  ~~helix84 12:42, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ad surfing 

message: the caching sectioned petered out mid-sentence.  I looked for, but didn't find, a version to safely revert to with the complete article.  In the absebce of anything better I tidied up  by removing the final sentence / para, so at least it stops with a full-stop, not mid-sentence.  However, this is very unsatisfactory.  Does anyone remember what it used to say, and can revert to a fuller version?  raining girl 17:24, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: S/he may have been experimenting or just vandalising, but the article was mostly wrecked by a user at 68.189.124.92 between 17:11 and 17:15 today.  The only interesting edit since then was Raining girl changing the number 4 to the word four.  I hope I've restored it OK - if I've missed anything useful, please add it back too :-) --Nigelj 19:11, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: where did the end of the article go?

message: The article lists four basic terms or concepts that allow the web as we know it to function:  hypertext, markup, the client/server model, and "resource identifiers."  Because the majority of humans alive today understand the concept of a URL and are very comfortable with the notion, having used them "hands on" in the address bar every day.  A URI and a URL are not the same thing, but the concept is very similar.  71.216.188.161 23:44, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Basic Terms 

message: Web-based redirects to this article, when it should redirect to Web application. I must also point out that Web-based application properly redirects to 
Web application. 01:02, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Improper redirect. 

message: There seems to be a bit of an edit war going on, during the past few months, over whether the nationalities of the inventors of the Web should be in the introduction.  After a lot of back-and-forth, Tim Berners-Lee's nationality (English) is not currently listed but Robert Calliau's (Belgian) is.  For consistency, I think we should have both or neither.  Which do people prefer? I don't care which, personally, as long as we are consistent.  --Coolcaesar 09:49, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Do we need nationalities in the introduction?

message: Is there a reason why the nationality of Tim Berners Lee is not permited to appear in the article, while Robert Cailliau is quite reasonably described as Belgian? The fact that Berners Lee is English has been deleted on several occasions. Do we have an anglo hater at large and can we identify this bigot? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.8.105.64 (talk) 07:12, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anglo hate? 

message: I agree with the earlier comment, it seems clear that the editor does not want the fact that Berners Lee is English to appear. Their hate is only  surpassed by their ignorance however since their current edit should read 'the Briton' not 'the British'. Grammar is clearly not a priority in the mind of a bigot. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.9.138.200 (talk) 21:05, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anglo Hate Confirmed 

message: why ? Because he is English speaking ?
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.205.142.75 (talk) 16:19, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lee mentioned a lot of times, Caillau once 

message: I believe the introduction is incorrect. As far as I know no-one who has worked on it has recieved a knighthood, thus the sir part is wrong. Also, I think Tim Burner-lee was Americain. I will check my sorces, namely the book Weaving the Web BY Tim Burner Lee. Corrupt one 00:11, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Intro incorrect? 

message: The statistics in this document are out-of-date (2005) and need updates.
I think this should be updated with some latest "guesstimates" (with different section) to reflect current estimations.
Citing several sources of information can be the solution to this out-of-date issue e.g. based on a data from this/my post 
* According to boutell.com guesstimate we have ~ 29.7 billion indexed pages on the World Wide Web (updated to Feb. 2007)
* http://worldwidewebsize.com suggest a ~22.34 billion indexed pages (Sep. 2007)
* Using a simple Google search for “or | -or +*” you will get about 17,340,000,000 documents estimation from Google.
This bring a nice round guesstimate average of 20 billion indexed pages.
Multiplying it with an average page size of 70K (based utexas.edu and 
optimizationweek.com)
Brings a rough estimation of ~1300* Tera = ~1.3 Peta of known/indexed web which might hide a ~600 Peta of deeper web
What do you think?
karmona 13:14, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Interesting, but keep in mind that we can only use reliable sources and no original research. I wouldn't say that boutell.com would work as a reliable source - it is unpublished and only uses some very much unjustified arithmetic. http://worldwidewebsize.com/ is based on an unpublished masters thesis which seems to have major statistical flaws to me (using DMOZ as a fair representative of the indexed web???). Maybe we can cite http://worldwidewebsize.com/ as "another attempt to estimate the size of the indexed web" without replacing the older 2005 study, which is published though outdated.--Sir Anon 12:27, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

text: I see your point, so maybe we can put these "guesstimated" statistics under the statistics section with some kind of  "guesstimates" disclaimer – I think it is better to  have updated data than wrong/old validated data. (karmona 14:51, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree. We should have data that complies with WP:NOR and WP:VERIFY first. That it be "up to date" is far less important. Printed encyclopedias can have data that is one or two decades old. Having to use data that is only two years old data is nothing. It's surely not bad enough to sidestep WP:NOR or WP:VERIFY. About the disclaimer: if the "guesstimated" data is untrustworthy, we shouldn't include it in the article at all; why use a disclaimer when we can just not put it in?--Mumia-w-18 15:03, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Update The Statistics Section 

message: Index terms              	Tim Berners-Lee <BR> (1999)  Weaving the Web	Robert Cailliau et al <BR> (2000)  How the Web was Born
Carpenter, Brian         	                                       	75, 90, (CERN PS) 143-4, 145, 146, 148, 159, 160, 166, (computing div.) 196-7, (BITNET) 80, (DECNET) 77, (TCP/IP) 87, (Tim Berners-Lee) 168
Cerf, Vint               	6                                           	71, 107, 309, (IMP number) 128, (Internet demo) 80-1, internetworking) 39, 40, 42, 43, 44, (Chair of Int. NWG) 64, (Jon Postel) 45, (Requiem for ARPANET) 46
CERNDOC                  	                                       	177-80, 181, 182, 183, 194, 197, 261
CERNNET                  	                                       	70-4, 81, 82, 83, 180
computer                 	(No entry)                                  	(What a dazzling inventory!)
Goldfarb, Charles        	                                       	160
Guide                    	                                       	128
Kay, Alan                	                                       	99, 186, 187, 188, 190
Kirstein, Peter          	                                       	51-5, 66, 70, 80, 84-5, 88
Llewellyn Smith, Chris   	                                       	221, 296
proposal                 	21-22                                       	(Alexandria) 271-3, 274, 276, 286, 287, 308, (Information Management) 180-4, (Information Management updated) 191
University College London	                                       	 
Van Dam, Andy            	27                                          	104-5, 127-8, 131, 307
--KYPark (talk) 15:21, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some comparison of the two main memoirs 

message: Can anyone find some demographic studies of the Web? I found ONE referance that those who use the Web a lot actually defy demographic surveys, and why. I welcome all sensible ideas.
Corrupt one (talk) 22:38, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Pew Internet has reliable studies for the U.S. but not so much the world. Google results seem to have become rather polluted over the past year or two (or is that my imagination?). I added some statistics to estimate the amount of the Web that is used commercially, and to explain how it used to gather data privately about Web users. Corrections most welcome (it's OK to ping me on my talk page if a long time passes). -Susanlesch (talk) 20:42, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Demographic studies 

message: The Asimov story features a system employing a slaved connection to a central server. Surely the first reference to a system similar to the Internet we have today is in Bill Gibson's Neuromancer? It's the oldest I can think of that describes a network of stand-alone servers that a user can navigate between using an overlayed interface (although there they use videophones that show them a 3D-spatial representation of the net rather than a hypertext-based browser interface like the WWW, but hey, it's the future after all). 81.111.58.48 (talk) 00:39, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Literary references 

message: From the articles here it is not really clear to me what exactly was the new contribution over the already existing internet. Barcovelero (talk) 12:06, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Difference from internet 

message: Piranhas live in South America in slow moving rivers such as the Amazon river and some go in sreams. Piranas like to eat fins from other fish,birds and somtimes they eat deer, frogs and other animals like really big animals. they cach there food by riping flesh from hurt or drowning animals or sneak up on other fish. Nobudy has bin recorded eaten by a piranha, but they say a person fell in the Amazon river and never came back up.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.207.66.195 (talk) 12:50, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  piranhas 

message: ...(that piranha thing's a bit weird, eh?!)
Anyway, i wanted to ask - could someone please add a new subsection to the article explaining what prefixes to addresses such as "www3.address.etc..." mean? and are there other types of prefixes also? and i'm pretty sure i've seen (sponsored?) prefixes such as "wwe.address.so.on" (or some other letter, not necessarily "e"). how is this possible and why and what does it mean, if anything? ta. 62.176.111.68 (talk) 13:25, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: here's one: http://www2.warnerbros.com/friendstv/container.html why the "www2"??? 87.126.59.214 (talk) 12:33, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Those are second-level domain names which can be arbitrarily designated by network administrators, though of course www.* is the most common for Web servers.  Those types of names have nothing to do with the Web per se (in terms of what Berners-Lee and Calliau actually designed) but were merely one of the interesting legacy quirks it inherited by using Domain Name System as part of Uniform Resource Identifiers.  Please read up on domain names before asking any more silly questions.  This is one of the really, really simple beginner issues (similar to learning how to boot a computer properly or the difference between clicking and dragging a mouse button) that are not appropriate for an encyclopedia article but would be more appropriate for Wikibooks or Wikihow.  Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a textbook. --Coolcaesar (talk) 08:16, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

text: I've just done a re-write of parts of that section - it was pretty out of date and a bit naff.  I hope it's more interesting and informative now. --Nigelj (talk) 21:47, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alternate prefixes 

message: This section mentions an Asimov story from 1956, I believe it should also (or even : instead) mention Murray Leinster's "A Logic Named Joe", which depicts something that is in many ways closer to the web, and is ten years older.91.177.141.33 (talk) 10:18, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The section should be deleted as an irrelevant non sequitur as well as original research in violation of core policy No original research.  The article is too long as it is, there is already a History of the World Wide Web article for such detail, and if we really want to get into such nonsense (about imaginary precursors to the Web), there are books from the late 19th century in New Zealand (this information has already been published and chewed over by professional historians) speculating about something resembling the Web.  But that's all really irrelevant to the Web because it's been thoroughly established by Berners-Lee's own writings as well as that of Engelbart and Nelson that they were inspired by the writings of Vannevar Bush. --Coolcaesar (talk) 16:04, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  History in litterature 

message: 'Bold text'  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.81.223.206 (talk) 16:19, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  wwwoiuyygtffy 

message: I made a minor change at the beginning (deleted a bit of random text and fixed a sentence) of the article. I guess it was vandalism so I believe it should be protected against such. Also, please edit it according to your standards, since what I changed was just so someone could understand the sentence.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.207.181.242 (talk) 04:59, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism