Category talk:History of the Internet

Contents of this category
I made a start at cleaning up the category since it was in a bit of a mess. My edits prompted these comments on my talk page:

"Hi Alan, I see that you're cleaning up the Internet history category. Any thoughts? Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 09:54, 2 October 2010 (UTC)"
 * Ted Nelson coined 'hypertext', so I think 'Internet history' is a valid category; 'history of the Web' or 'history of hypertext' would be more specific, but I don't know that there's a need for those categories.
 * Arundel Elementary School says " Vice President Al Gore visited the school to give a press conference concerning the implementation of an Internet network in the school. Arundel was the first school in the nation to have such a network."--so that needs *some* category like 'Internet history' -- possibly 'places related to Internet history' (again, that may be too specific).
 * For Hotline Communications and InterCon Systems, some reflection of their role in Internet history would make sense to me. Possibly 'history of Internet-related software' (i.e. web browsers, TCP/IP software, etc) would be helpful; this could be a super-category of web browsers.

As with many other categories I find that there is a degree of over-categorisation where articles with only a passing relationship with the category topic are included. Incidentally, WP categorisation guidelines calls over-categorisation the creation of too many categories and makes no mention of added irrelevant categories to articles.

With respect to the articles above:
 * Ted Nelson does not belong in this category but a History of hypertext article (with info about him) would be a valid entry. Alternatively, he should be in a Category:Internet pioneers which is then as a subcat here and of Category:Computer pioneers
 * Arundel Elementary School does not belong here. A History of the Internet at Arundel Elementary School (!) or a History of the Internet in the United States article would be valid.
 * I am always wary of articles on companies but for companies such as Hotline Communications and InterCon Systems have their own categories at Category:Defunct Internet service providers and Category:Defunct software companies

Categories are navigational aids and if they are cluttered up with disparate topics they are of less use. Categories are a yes/no, include/not included system. There is no annotation about the individual articles in a category. Information can only be gleaned for the article name. Therefore, all the articles in a category should have a very close association with the category topic.

Another article that I removed was Google. The History of Google article is a perfectly valid entry in this category of course!-- Alan Liefting (talk) - 22:11, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi there, Alan, this is mostly toward you:
 * A bit concerned about this edit to The WELL article:
 * (cur | prev) 09:31, 3 October 2010 Alan Liefting (talk | contribs) m (13,920 bytes) (Removed Category:Internet history (using HotCat)) (undo) . Especially since we covered the WELL in my History of Information course through Fred Turner's writings about The WELL:
 * "Wednesday, August 5 – Origins of The Internet and the World Wide Web"
 * Turner, Fred. 2005. Introduction and Chapter 5, pp 1-10, 141-175. From Counter-culture to Cyberculture. University of Chicago Press: Chicago.
 * Perhaps this means the "Internet History" category falls under the technical history and not some of the social aspects? Would love to understand better what this category is to encompass.
 * (69.110.21.129 (talk) 22:26, 3 October 2010 (UTC))

Hi Alan, Thanks for your earlier suggestions; they make sense. I think this could go back in to the category: What do you think? Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 08:45, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Archie search engine

Contents of this category are a mess
Begin with this text from the Category page:


 * The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used in every-day speech without much distinction. However, the Internet and the World Wide Web are not one and the same. The Internet is a global data communications system. It is a hardware and software infrastructure that provides connectivity between computers. Simply, "Internet is a network of networks", where two or more than two computers connected through the wired or wireless network for sending and receiving the date like- mails, video, song etc. In contrast, the Web is one of the services communicated via the Internet. The Web is a collection of interconnected documents and other resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs. Other services using the internet include electronic mail, File Transfer Protocol, Telnet, online chat, Voice over Internet Protocol, Instant messaging, Fax, Internet Broadcasting, and Usenet.

The only entries in this category should be for the communications system. All the applications/services should have, if needed, their own History... and those history categories should all have the category History of software. History articles where a history cat is not needed should simply have the cat History of software. 69.106.238.83 (talk) 03:22, 10 January 2013 (UTC)