It's ALIVE!!!!

I built a website earlier this week.  It was much easier than I remember it being, possibly because everything is "point and click" nowadays.  I'm going to write a second post about that, but first...

After the site was built I expected to feel proud or relieved or satisfied.  But I just felt...irresponsible.  Because the fact is, I built the site for a class project, and while it's good work (in-my-never-to-be-humble-opinion), it's still just a class project.  That means I am unlikely to maintain the site.  I won't add more information to it, update the information as it changes, or make sure the links keep working.

But even though I will, for all intents and purposes, abandon my poor website as soon as I receive a grade for it...it'll still be out there.  Along with all the other www detritus that litters the Internet.  All the one-post blogs and websites full of broken links and abandoned MySpace pages.  What happens to these abandoned sites?

The Internet is still really, really young.  It was created in a largely DIY way, and it's grown organically and egalitarian-ly (is that even a word?).  That organic-ness (again, is that a word???) is one of the things many people (myself included) love about the web.  But one downside to letting everyone and anyone contribute to the Internet is that most people are only casual contributors.  They build a site, start a blog, open a profile...and then they lose interest.  But their abandoned websites remain, like the napkins, soda bottles, and corndog sticks littering the stands after a ballgame.

I'm tempted to say that it's no big deal.  People surf the net (whoa!  90's flashback!) using search engines, and search engines filter results, so the old, crappy, abandoned sites are unlikely to clutter things up too badly.  But the fact remains that there's a virtual wasteland of stuff out in the ether.  No one monitors it or maintains it or - seemingly - cares about it.

But who knows whether that will always be the case?

I'll probably just abandon my website, like so many others have before me.  But I wonder what impact - if any - this kind of "build it and forget it" attitude will have on us in the long run.  Will the day come when we launch a campaign to clean up the web?