1996-2009: Your genealogy starting point online for more than a decade!
1996-2009: Your genealogy starting point online for more than a decade! |
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Cyndi's List - The Year 2000 in ReviewJanuary 3, 2001In just two months, Cyndi's List will be 5 years old (March 4, 1996). With the end of the year 2000, I thought it might be interesting to share some of the progress we've made throughout the year on:
Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet
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LINK ACTIVITY SUMMARY:
Link activity chart for the year 2000: +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
ABOUT THE NUMBERS FOR THE YEAR 2000:More than 26,000 new links were found on the Internet, and either submitted or visited, verified, categorized, and added to Cyndi's List, increasing the grand total to almost 85,000 links at year-end.Approx. 4,000 submitted links were processed from the "What's New" pages on Cyndi's List. In the ongoing process of categorizing these submitted links, the backlog of submissions was reduced by almost one third, beginning with 12,927 and ending with 9,090. I gratefully appreciate everyone's ongoing patience with this process. Thus over 30,000 new links were added to the categories on Cyndi's List for a total of more than 75,850 categorized links with an additional 9,000 uncategorized links for a grand total of more than 84,950 links available through Cyndi's List at year-end. That is an increase of more than 67% over last year, at a rate of adding over 80 links per day or 2,500 links per month. Each categorized link was reviewed individually by myself or my team for appropriateness and description and then hand-coded and added to the site.
In keeping with my philosophy that a list of links is only useful if the links *actually work*, more than 15,000 existing links were updated to keep them in working order. That is approximately one out of every six links on Cyndi's List updated in the year 2000. The Internet changes a great deal. I really wish it would become stagnant for a bit.
About 2,000 links to web sites were deleted due to the fact that sites were moved (and couldn't be found again), were discontinued, or otherwise broken. Links are only deleted after I am unsuccessful when I make every effort to locate a new address or to contact the web site owner for update information.
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In addition to new categories, many of the already existing categories were cleaned up, reorganized, restructured and generally spiffed up to make them easier to use. For example, the Mailing Lists and Newsgroups page was split into two separate category pages and the Software & Computers category now has a GEDCOM section and a Handhelds section.
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In November, I added a Google search engine option for Cyndi's List to give you yet another way to find useful links on my site (see the URL shown above). I find that the Google search engine returns better, more precise hits for your search. However, the index for the Google search engine is only updated as often as Google's bots revisit Cyndi's List. This means that the index can be one or two months out of date (at the least), thus doesn't include the most recent links added to Cyndi's List.
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The page now has an table of contents outline, enhanced descriptions and links, and a new dos and dont's section titled "Common Web Site Problems That I See Every Day."
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Cyndi appeared in ten episodes of the "Ancestors II" PBS television series:
Cyndi was elected to the Board of Directors for the National Genealogical Society and began serving a four-year term in October:
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Early last spring I was saddened to say goodbye to Jen Godwin who had helped with the site since the previous November. I miss Jen, but can't begrudge her need to do some of her own genealogical research for a change, right? Thanks go to Jen for helping me get the site through the last winter.
I am very lucky to have another friend helping me with the site now. Sam Behling, of Notable Women Ancestors, stepped into Jen's role and has been a champion at helping me hack away at those previously submitted links in the What's New section. Sam's computer knowledge and genealogical expertise are invaluable, as is her enduring friendship and support.
When I first took on helpers in November 1998, my sister-in-law, Michele, began working on the site. Michele works at fixing broken links and has been through the entire site TWICE with a link-checking program. She is now also helping me with the 2nd Edition of the Cyndi's List book. All that while bringing into the world the cutest nephew I ever had -- Logan, who is now 7 months old. My niece Jessica is in line to learn HTML next, helping her mom on the computer as only a 5-year-old can do. As if being married to my brother wasn't a huge job all by itself. I'm so happy to have Michele helping me out each day.
This past May, I did something that I haven't done in 5 years -- I gave the car keys to my husband, Mark. Well, it was actually the password to the Cyndi's List server, but you get the idea. All teasing aside, Mark has always helped me with the web site. He has scoped out topics and contributed in many ways behind the scenes, but I had always done the physical updates to the web pages myself. I never wanted to impose and ask Mark to spend any more time on the site than he had already (after all, he has a "real" job and other interests too). Mark offered to help while Michele took time off for Logan's birth. He is now helping me each day and has been responsible for many major updates to specific categories and areas on the site over the past few months. I am very lucky to have a husband who shares the same love of genealogy, dull indexing and HTML programming.
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For those of you who have asked about current pictures of my son, Evan:
Our newest family members, the pups:
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Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet - The Year 2000 in Review Webmaster & Owner: Cyndi Howells, Cyndi@CyndisList.com Updated Friday, 18 August 2000, 02:04:16 AM PDT
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