Babtsedavka (full title — "Babtsedavka (or All About Women)", domain babcedavka.Nizhny.ru Information Service (nizhny.ru)) was an author-run site about women and relationships with them, hosted in the Nizhny Novgorod domain zone nizhny.ru from 2000 to 2009. It was run by an author who signed himself "Igor Timofyeev" and used the handle ^Hamlet^; the footer of the homepage carried the line "©2000-2004 Igor Timofyeev" and the mark "Hamlet arts"[2]. The site was listed in the "Rubrikator" of nn.ru — a directory of Nizhny Novgorod sites — and was registered in the Nizhny Novgorod counter Counter.nn.ru under number 2409[3]. The site itself played on its Nizhny Novgorod origin: the homepage carried a reader-submitted rhyme beginning "BabtsedAvku nIzhny rU / ya chitayu poutrU" ("I read Babtsedavka Nizhny.ru every morning")[2].

What the site looked like and what it offered

The earliest surviving snapshot of the homepage is dated 7 December 2000[1]. On the left stood a menu of sections: "Where It All Began", "The Classics", "Sentiments", "Zubki" ("Teeth"), "Experience", "Psycho", "Forum", "Your Opinions", an article rating, a site search with an "exact match" checkbox, and blocks for "Advertising" and "Friendly Sites"[1]. By April 2004 the lineup had changed: the historical "Where It All Began" section was gone, but "Philosophy" and "Chat-chat-chat" had appeared[2]. In the 2000 meta keywords the author described the site's subject by enumeration: "women girls unhappy love unrequited love sex marriage matrimony wife sexuality psychology flirting pickup divorce family mother-in-law humor"[1].

The center of the homepage was occupied by the "Author's Column". In the first installment the author explained his intent: as the homepage put it, "here I am collecting materials that might actually help someone with troubles with girls," adding that the crude title was not a call to action but a joke[1]. The same phrase served as the site's description in the nn.ru directory[3]. By 2004 nine columns had accumulated ("From the Author #1" through "From the Author #9"); the installment of 16 September 2003 retold statistics on the life expectancy of bachelors, citing the source "SEXUS"[2]. Alongside stood a "Phrase of the Month" section and a running poll with an open response form: in December 2000 readers were invited to come up with a new name for the site ("Some members of the female persuasion don't like the site's name… I hereby declare a referendum!")[1], while in 2004 the question under discussion was "Why do girls wear miniskirts?", under which hung a list of submitted replies ranging from everyday musings to outright crude jabs at women[2].

The right-hand column held a news feed, which shows what the site was filled with. On 20 November 2000 "Zubki" (jokes, stories, the "Toothy Gallery") was updated, on 24 November the third digest of the RU.PICKUP.GURU echo conference appeared, on 28 November six new items went into "Sentiments", on 6 December "A Talk with Young People About Christian Marriage by Father Grigory" appeared, and on 7 December 2000 a forum launched in test mode[1]. After that came books and articles in the "Psycho" section: on 11 September 2001 — "Man and Woman", on 30 October — "Why the Temple Is Falling Apart" on the causes of family breakdown, on 2 December — "Seduction" by OSV and Gorin, on 3 December — a collection of pickup scripts in the "Experience" section, on 7 September 2002 — Cesare Lombroso, on 7 November 2002 — "Fear of the Female Body" and "Male and Female in Language" in "Philosophy", on 7 February 2003 — Willard F. Harley's "His Needs, Her Needs" ("Bank of Love")[2]. The author took no responsibility for this content: the footer stated "Full responsibility for the content of materials rests with their authors"[2]. Those who wished could use a link-exchange button[1].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

In the Nizhny Novgorod site directory, Babtsedavka was listed simultaneously in two categories of the "Projects: Entertainment and Leisure" tree — "Humor and Jokes"[3] and "Sex, Erotica, Leisure"[4]. The site's visibility is measurable: in the "Top Picks" section, where the Rubrikator placed resources that "Rubrikator visitors click through to most often, based on the last 30 days," the site ranked 68th with 197 click-throughs (snapshot of 25 July 2002)[5] and 81st with 191 click-throughs (18 November 2002)[6] — meaning it stayed within the top hundred click-throughs across the entire Nizhny Novgorod directory.

The counter.nn.ru figure, which the directory printed next to each listing, hovered around three and a half hundred for Babtsedavka: 365 in June 2002[3], 321 in July[5], and 331 in November 2002[6], 396 in May 2003[7], 390 in January 2004[8]; in an earlier snapshot of the "Sex, Erotica, Leisure" category from 22 May 2002, the figure next to the site was 90.97[4]. That put it in the middle of its category: in "Humor and Jokes" the site ranked fourth, behind "Ostrie.ru" with a figure of 14833, "NikSite->Humor" (558), and a collection of Simpsons pictures (444), and ahead of "Homesite" (363)[3]. On how the counter itself worked and what its figures meant, see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating and the article Nizhny Novgorod Internet.

How it closed

The site's content life ended before its domain did: the last news item in the feed is dated 7 February 2003, and in the snapshot from 3 April 2004 the feed still opens with that same item[2]. The copyright line in the footer of that same snapshot had been updated to 2004[2]. The last homepage snapshot in the web archive is dated 13 December 2009: by then the address served not "Babtsedavka" but a single line reading "This site requires JavaScript support"[9]. The address never came back to life in the archive afterward; there is no live site at it today.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2000 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — nn.ru Rubrikator, "Humor and Jokes" category, June 2002 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — nn.ru Rubrikator, "Sex, Erotica, Leisure" category, May 2002 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — nn.ru Rubrikator, "Top Picks" section, July 2002 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — nn.ru Rubrikator, "Top Picks" section, November 2002 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — nn.ru Rubrikator, "Humor and Jokes" category, May 2003 (archive)
  8. web.archive.org — nn.ru Rubrikator, "Sex, Erotica, Leisure" category, January 2004 (archive)
  9. web.archive.org — Last homepage snapshot, 2009 (archive)