More Reading & Resources, Page 5
Directories
A directory (also called a gateway) is a good place to start looking for adoption-related information. Many of the sites included in directories will have links to other Web sites. A list of Web sites recommended by the compiler of a Web page can also be called a “links” page, so look out for that word as a possible source of more Web sites.
A directory is a group of Web sites classified together, usually by subject. They work like a tree, with main subject branches being subdivided into narrower and narrower topics. With luck, at the end of the branching system you will find a selected and manageable number of Web sites about the particular subject you are interested in. It is also possible to search only the contents of a directory (or branch of a directory), in the same way as you would use a search engine to search the whole Web. This can be a way of retrieving only a manageable number of hits. It is also possible to have a directory show only sites from a specific country.
Since many directories are compiled on the basis of submissions from the owners of Web sites, and many Web site owners use commercial services which for a fee submit their details to many search engines, you will find that the Web sites listed in the various directories will be pretty much the same, although it’s always worth looking for unique ones if you have special interests.
Almost all the main search engines have directories associated with them, and the main headings of these will be displayed on the Homepage of the search engine. AltaVista, Google, LookSmart, Metacrawler, Mirago, Open Directory, and Yahoo! all have directories with adoption and fostering branches. Many smaller search engines search only the Web sites included in their directories, not the whole of the Internet, and it is difficult to tell which do or don’t. The list of specific Web sites at the end of this section includes some specialist directories about adoption.
Quality
On the Internet there is no quality control, and you have to find the gold mixed in with the dross. And there is an awful lot of dross. If you don’t already know how to evaluate a Web site’s quality, look at one of the free Web sites which teach you how to do this, such as the Internet Detective Tutorial or The Online Netskills Interactive Course (TONIC). A few preliminary cautions, though. Web sites listed by a search engine or in a directory are not presented in order of their quality. Many search engines and directories accept payment from Web site owners to give them prominence or preferential listing at the top of the results page. Other search engines present their results in terms of “relevance”, which has nothing to do with the quality of the content. Relevance is based solely on the number of times a word appears in the Web site, or whether it appears in the “metadata” (a part of the Web site you don’t see, which acts like a library catalogue entry), or how many of the words you typed into the search box were found in the Web site.
Directories often claim to vet the sites included for quality, or at least to weed out unacceptable sites, but very few, except for those gateways aimed at scholars or professionals, actually make real quality judgments. One directory which does exercise serious quality control and is still aimed at the general public is the Internet Public Library.
Communities
In addition to Web sites there are a large number of mailing lists, bulletin boards, forums, chat rooms, newsgroups, discussion groups or e-groups. These are often collectively called “communities”. They are different kinds of e-mail groups where members write an e-mail and it is sent automatically to all the group’s members using a single joint distribution point. Communities come in many types, both for professionals or those involved personally in adoptions. Some are closed — membership is only available to people with particular qualifications: researchers, child adoptees, adult adoptees, foundlings, birth mothers, parents of large adoptive families, trans-racial adoptees, families who have adopted from specific foreign countries, etc. You may have to prove your eligibility to join such a group. Others have open membership, even if they are oriented towards particular problems, such as extreme behaviour by adopted children, tracing birth families or adoptees.
Many groups are moderated, which means that there is someone who vets messages, either before or after sending, to weed out irrelevant, offensive, personally abusive, libellous or blasphemous content. Moderators decide who can join and can expel someone for violating the rules. Others are unmoderated, with no holds barred. Another kind of distinction is that some groups simply distribute members’ messages, which you collect the next time you download your e-mail. You read them when you want to, respond if you want, and send off your response, just like ordinary e-mail, except that your reply goes to everyone in the group, not just the person who wrote the message. Other groups operate in real time: you write and receive messages “live”, just as if you were on the telephone, except that instead of talking to a single person you are typing computer messages and there may be a number of people online and contributing (or just “listening in”) at the same time.
Almost all such e-groups require you to register to make use of their services, and the ones run by commercial services often make money by selling on the registration information to advertisers. This means you are liable to receive large amounts of junk e-mail (called “spam”), and there seems to be no way to avoid it, although you can buy programs for your computer which try to filter out spam before it gets into your mailbox. Spam is a hazard when you access many Web sites, in fact, even if they don’t require you to register, because your computer sends its unique address automatically to the Web site you are visiting.
There is no check on the accuracy of people’s registration information or on the personas they adopt in the e-group. This means that someone who presents herself as a middle-aged adoptive mother in Bournemouth with five children could in fact be an elderly male pensioner in Texas who has never had any children at all but is harmlessly living a vicarious life on the Internet, or a paedophile in Glasgow looking for victims, or a dangerously angry victim of the social services trying to locate and kidnap back a child lost to the system. So be wary of what you say as regards identifying information such as real names, addresses and phone numbers. If you feel uneasy about putting yourself (and possibly your family) in this position, stick to services which have moderators, maintain a separate e-mail address which you reserve for this kind of use, complain to the moderator if you receive unwelcome individual messages from someone in the group, and “unsubscribe” (resign) if you start to feel uncomfortable.
If you are a subscriber to the Internet services of Prodigy, CompuServe or AOL, they may also have resource directories of Web sites and e-mail groups which would be of interest.
© Roger Ridley Fenton
