OoCities - FAQ (revised in March 2013) - click on a Question to get an answer.
"I am a former GeoCities author......Have you got my old page?
Use the search on oocities.org, check if its online at oocities.org/yournikname, hk.oocities.org/nikname (or other country subdomain)
or oocities.org/neighborhood/subneigborhood/your-4-digit-number.
If you can't remember your nikname or URL(s), then try to remind what was your nikname@yahoo.com, or try to search exact keywords or quotes in " " in the google search on www.oocities.org ( it adds a filter like site:oocities.org OR site:geocities.ws OR site:....... to every search invisibly). ( - Or try to remember from which other pages it had links? ) And there are more archives! - Geocities.ws and reocities.com (and archive.org, that tries to archive the whole internet! and each page in different date versions!) If you still can't find a lost Geocities page in any of these "Archiveteam's geocities torrent" http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=GeoCities may also be worth a try ( just dont download the whole as of the size, just watch the directories!) - (And at last maybe asking internetarchaeology.org. Or trying it a webcitation.com if your page was educational and linked in wikipedia) And there is a small chance that we have it but didnt put it online yet, especially for www.oocities.org/hk and www.oocities.org/it. ...Thanks for saveing my old GeoCities page but I would like to update it daily. How?"
For now, we are providing rather an archive and we are not able to give access to our servers for most active sites. But we will be glad to send you your files to enable you to upload and update them somewhere else and to make them available to a bigger audience than here.
...I would like to update a single issue on my old GeoCities page."
Write an email to OoCities {AT} gmail {DOT} com and we will manually work this out. Simply include your updated files or lines of html.
...I dont want my old GeoCities page to stay online. Why did you archive it at all?"
How to remove it:
Just write a mail to oocities {AT} gmail {DOT} com and it will be gone. Usually within a few days but please understand it can sometimes take longer (especially should your request include a complicated update) or isn't urgent, but we read and finish all requests. - Should your request be urgent you may include the word "asap". Note: (Preferably) use your original email which was stated on your page to verify that you are the owner. If you cant show ownership you, need to make an applicable DMCA request instead which we need to check more carefully. (We fully respect you copyright and will try to sort out your request at our earliest convience within 14 days.) Don't forget to ask us to send you the files before we take the page offline, otherwise the files might be lost. For removals from other archives: http://forums.geocities.ws or admin@geocities.ws http://www.reocities.com/newhome/selfservice.html (And for archive.org - info@archive.org - But nothing of archive.org wayback machine is in searchengines anyways) When does a page disappear from Google search results? Google updates the search results and cache for most oocities pages every few weeks (raw estimation) in urgent cases tell us to notify google, which can speed up this process. This following URL helps to speed up the removal from the google results and cache but only when we already modified or removed the content source at ours - try http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals - (just dont waste time with it before we did the modification at the source.) Why we archived your page at all: Sorry, OoCities took action to keep all these pages online assuming to be serving the public interesst (including you). In most cases, owners are happy that we have kept their pages online. (If they wanted them offline before they would probably already have taken them offline at GeoCities before October 2009. All pages are archived exactly like they were between 20 and 27 october 2009 (besides those updated on Authors requests). if in some cases a page looks distorted that's because some picture files are missing Basic questions:"What exactly was GeoCities.com?"
GeoCities.com was the first free Web Host, hosting millions of small webpages since 1994.
In 1999 it was bought by Yahoo and closed in 2009.
GeoCities can also be seen as the predecessor of myspace and facebook.
With GeoCities.com, the world also lost millions of pieces of unique content which could have been saved easily.
The authors were informed but many did not even notice it. Thus many did not agree in the deletion of their work.
For further Information read our main page OoCities.org or
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoCities.com
"What exactly is OoCities.com?"
OoCities.com tried to save many GeoCities.com pages during the last days they were online from 20 to 27 October 2009.
As we did not have much time and only a very small budget we were "only" able save a share of around 2 Million pages.
OoCities especially tried to perserve all those pages which are unique scientific sources like those which are referenced by Wikipedia.
"Does OoCities cooperate with 'Yahoo! GeoCities'?"
OoCities is no way affiliated with 'Yahoo! GeoCities'.
Misc. about OoCities and its future:"Can I download Oocities?"
We look forward to hear from you if you have unused capacities to make a backup of the whole archive,
are interested in researching anything specific like .midi files or have any meaningful ideas how to enhance this web museum.
"How does OoCities get rid of any spam, malware and copyright/DMCA infrigment material ?"
Thats one of the most striking issues referring to any provider or Web service which distributes user-generated content.
As we aren't the originator of any of the pages, we can't possibly know every single one nor be responsible for them (OCILLA §512c).
While there were hardly any copyright infrigments or malware, we detected and removed ~23.000 spam pages and inappropriate contents by now
(1.15% out of around 2 Million pages in total). Since the pages were already online since up to 15 years before we started, many were fine/accepted already nontheless normally some may remain that were never even read before and specificalyl, in the last period of time before geocities closed, attention per new page decreased.
At least on the long term, in the case of OoCities, the content quality can only get better. (since our stream of new content(edits) is relatively small and already moderated)
Anyhow, to maintain a cleaner colletion of information, with fewer exceptions we still hope for more volunteers to report what remains. - In case you find any please take your chance to "improve the internet a bit at a time" and click the "report"-button on the certain page or notice us at oocities {AT} gmail {DOT} com. If you are a developer and have an idea/experience in automated filtering please also contact us. "How to ensure continuous availabilty of the archive?"
OoCities is made by volunteers. First servers had to be paid for by supporters. Currently we display a content-related ad within a separated frame/box next to many pages. Similar to how it was before on GeoCities, but only outside of pages and no more embedded within the resolution of the pages(, which could be annoying). Using money from ads, we hope to stay able to pay our costs in the future, yet may rely on volunteers. (Would OoCities earn more than it's expenses we will either add hosting redundancy, cut back ads and/or support a charitable cause.) You may contact us if you want to advertise your (charity/) cause for free! If you saw an ads on your personal but dont want it contact us as well. Among other oocities, is not displaying any ad for visitors who are directed to us by wikipedia to expand the educational/adfree userexperience. Please send any further questions,feedback or suggestions to oocities[at]gmail[dot]com |