otherkinnews | Geocities disappearing; download your old favorites now [internet] (Reply)

Trigger warnings for this article: information loss. Safe for work.

Geocities.com will disappear in a few months, and all the personal websites hosted on it will vanish along with it. This includes some decade-old sites about therianthropes and otherkin.

In April, Yahoo declared¹ that it will shut down Geocities.com later this year. A specific closing date has not yet been announced.² Geocities, a once-popular host for personal web pages, was a significant part of Internet culture during the mid- to late Nineties. It’s now considered obsolete, and receives less traffic³ than it once did. Yahoo itself says⁴ that it won’t offer an equivalent free web-hosting service, but Geocities e-mail addresses will continue to work. Coilhouse, a blog of alternative culture, provides heartfelt commentary⁵ on this sad event.

Most Geocities sites are archived in the Internet Wayback Machine,⁶ along with everything else on the web. (Boy, if the Wayback Machine itself ever went down, I don’t know what I would do!) Some people are making efforts to archive Geocities⁷ in particular, although they don’t yet know how their archive will be redistributed. Unfortunately, you can’t rely on these to collect a complete snapshot of websites… there are usually parts missing. The parts overlooked by the archives are often image files, but sometimes they’re entire pages or sites. Now would be the time for you to download a personal copy of your favorite sites on Geocities.

If you’re a therianthrope or otherkin, some of your favorite Geocities sites may well include sites such as general introductions to therianthropy such as Yaiolani’s Werewolf and Shapeshifter Codex.⁸ The enormous Codex of werewolf legends and therian spirituality was formerly on Lycanthrope.org in 1996 as the Werewolf and Shapeshifter Handbook and The Shifter’s Edge. (The copy of the Codex on archive.org is incomplete to the point of being unnavigable. That goes to show how it’s worthwhile to download one’s own copy.) Other introductions to therianthropy are hosted there, such as Lady Shadowmyst’s Werebeast Support Page,⁹ and Snowwolf’s Therianthropy Resource,¹⁰ which collects essays by various therians: Autumn Fox, Katmandu, Shadow Nightwolf, Pinky, Polar, and Sterling. The Otherworld Adventure¹¹ contains the home page for the Otherkin Gazette, a mailing list.

There are personal sites of otherkin and therianthropes on Geocities, such as Valindë’s Otherkin,¹² which tells about species such as the Brinn, and the Wlfdog’s Lair,¹³ with an essay about a wolf therian’s experiences with awakening. Another therian, Sabersinger,¹⁴ describes her vivid dream-shifts.

Will these sites relocate to new hosts to survive the shutdown of Geocities? I e-mailed the maintainers of each of these sites to interview them. Sabersinger said she was uncertain about whether she would migrate her site. “I have grown ambivalent to my site because I have changed a great deal since I created it. When I first made it, I had just discovered my were-sides and was excited about this new revelation in my life. Then, I graduated from university, started work and got married and had a kid (and another one on the way now). So, real physical shifts came along - as in that I grew up, matured. My were-sides are there, just quieter but still a strong presence. I don't see a pressing need to show it now. I might transfer to my site to Dreamwidth, either temporarily or permanent, I don't know still. Will let you know once I have done the transfer.”

Several of my e-mails bounced: those e-mail addresses are no longer in use. This implies that Yaiolani, Adara, and Valindë are no longer maintaining their sites, so these parts of therian and otherkin history are likely to disappear. This is much like how significant portions of the animal spirituality conversations on the newsgroups alt.horror.werewolves¹⁵ and alt.lifestyle.furry¹⁶ are no longer available from the archives.

I searched high and low to find the therian and otherkin sites that are still extant on Geocities. This is what I was able to find, but I’m sure they’re not all. If you know of any that I’ve missed, please share them, so we can assemble a more complete archive of them! If you someday read this article and find that the Geocities sites I’ve described are long gone, even from the Wayback Machine, you can contact me.¹⁷ I’ll send you a copy, because I’ve already downloaded them. (I won’t repost the sites publicly. If you created those sites and don’t want me to distribute them privately, just say so, and I’ll respect that request.)

- O. Scribner

Sources

Stephen Shankland. “Now closing: Geocities, a relic of Web’s early days.” CNet. Posted April 23, 2009, accessed May 24, 2009. http://news.cnet.com/now-closing-geocities-a-relic-of-webs-early-days/
“WebRing Rescues Endangered Geocities Sites.” PR Newswire. Posted May 19, 2009, accessed May 24, 2009. http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/05-19-2009/0005028860&EDATE=
Leena Rao. “Yahoo Quietly Pulls the Plug on Geocities.” TechCrunch. Posted April 23, 2009, accessed May 24, 2009. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/23/yahoo-quietly-pulls-the-plug-on-geocities/
“Geocities will close later this year.” Yahoo! GeoCities Help. Accessed May 24, 2009. http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/geocities/geocities-05.html
Nadya Lev. “Lighting a Candle for Geocities.” Coilhouse. Posted April 27, 2009, accessed May 24, 2009. http://coilhouse.net/2009/04/27/lighting-a-candle-for-geocities/
Internet Archive: Wayback Machine. Accessed May 24, 2009. http://www.archive.org/web/web.php
Jason Scott. “Geocities: Lessons so far.” Posted Apr. 26, 2009, accessed May 24, 2009. http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1961
Yaiolani. The Werewolf and Shapeshifter’s Codex. Accessed May 24, 2009. http://www.geocities.com/yaiolani/
Shadowmyst. The Werebeast Support Page. Accessed May 24, 2009. http://www.geocities.com/lady_shadowmyst/TWSP/
Snowwolf. The Therianthropy Resource. Posted September 28, 1999, accessed May 24, 2009. http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Canopy/1927/greenspiral/resource.html
Adara. Otherworld Adventure. Posted 1999 (?), accessed May 24, 2009. http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Labyrinth/1459/
Valindë Wilwaren. Valindë’s Otherkin. Posted 1998, accessed May 24, 2009. http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor/1015/
Maia “Jessie T. Wolf” Davis. The Wlfdog’s Lair. Accessed May 24, 2009. http://www.geocities.com/jtwlfdog/welcome.html
Sabersinger. Posted 2001 (?), accessed May 24, 2009. http://www.geocities.com/sabersger/shewolf.html
Katmandu. “AHWw Full FAQ.” WEREWeb. Accessed May 24, 2009. http://www.swampfox.demon.co.uk/utlah/Community/fullfaq.html
“alt.lifestyle.furry.” WikiFur, the furry encyclopedia. Posted Aug. 16, 2005, updated Aug. 20, 2008, accessed May 24, 2009. http://furry.wikia.com/wiki/Alt.lifestyle.furry
Scribner, O. “How to contact O. Scribner.” O. Scribner’s Journal. Posted Dec. 15, 2008, accessed May 24, 2009. http://frameacloud.livejournal.com/869635.html