The Backlink Project

[hey light]

So, a while ago, I posted something about web science, and how learning about it will help us with our mission to help the world through making information more open. So, I was thinking about ways to do that, and I came up with something I call the backlink project. Basically, people would document how many hyperlinks it took them to get from one website to another (i.e. how many hyperlinks it takes to get from www.blip.fm to http://www.facebook.com). This would help with documenting the relationships between webpages, and creating a very large mep of the web.

[ifyouwantblood]

Wow! Just WOW
That would be insane! I dont think it's doable because it's constantly changing. But still that would be incredible!
Maybe create a bot that saves every link on every website, and categorizes them from ads to links. Every website.could be a small circle ( or big, depending on the amount of links ). With lines to the sites it ok Its links too

After writing this I still cannot find a way to benefit from this though=/

[eatahead]

That is a very interesting idea. Of course, it probably would require very powerful computers and many to pull of a project like this. Even google, who indexes web pages, which is somewhat similar to this, because they have to find something and mark it, cannot index a site right after it has changed or been created, so what I'm getting at is that it would take A LOT of computer power to pull this off. But really, I think this is a really good idea. Google actually does do something way scaled down to this, but not really what you're thinking. They can tell you what sites link to one certain site, so for example example1.com, site2.com, and gohere3.com all have links on their site to mine, and they are able to tell me that.

[hey light]

Actually, it'll take no more that a regular computer. See, i'm not going to be using computers, i'm going to be using volunteers. They'll start out at a certain webpage, and then see how many hyperlinks it takes to get to a certain webpage, and then from that webpage to another.

[eatahead]

Oh I get it! That works even better! Can I assume you haven't gotten into the tiny details of how everything will be written down and recorded and organized just yet?

[hey light]

Here's what I think will happen. I'll set up a forum once everything's all up and running, and people will be sent out on the web start at a certain site and and end a certain site, counting how many 'steps' it took to get from one site to another, which people will report when they're done, which will be made into a map with the actual "distance" between sites, with Photoshop of something. Then, once we're finished (whenever that is) , we will group all of them together into one big map.

[pogotribenews]

Do you need people to start volunteering now?

[awsomeness122]

I am in once this gets going

[Yokailo]

If you need help with this, I would volunteer. ^^

I think it's a brilliant idea, even just for the fun of it.

[hey light]

The forum has been created! So, go to backlinkproject.forummotion.com, register, and we'll get this thing started!