portal.sarov.ru was the city portal of Sarov, the "former Arzamas-16," in Nizhny Novgorod Region. In the nn.ru catalog, from which the site entered our census, it is described as follows: "Portal of the city of Sarov (former Arzamas-16), Nizhny Novgorod Region. News, classifieds, greeting cards, secondhand books, personal sections, jobs, forum, chat, guestbook and more."[2] The Nizhny Novgorod connection is also confirmed by the only surviving snapshot of the home page: all postal addresses listed on it are Sarov addresses, with postal codes 607181, 607182, 607189 and 607190 and a direct note of "Nizhny Novgorod Region," while the organizers' phone and fax are given with the long-distance code 83130[1]. The last snapshot of the address in the web archive is dated February 5, 2013[1].

What the portal offered

The structure of the site is known only from the catalog description: news, classifieds, greeting cards, secondhand books, personal sections, jobs, forum, chat and guestbook[2]. None of these sections have survived to us: our census works with snapshots of home pages, and of the list above only the section names in the catalog remain.

The Sarov cluster in the census is not limited to the portal: the same nn.ru catalog lists the "Ironic magazine 'Blin!'" (blin.sarov.ru), "Sarovsvyazinform" (internet.sarov.ru), "Prickly Sarov" at the address of the domain sarov.ru itself, "Portal Sarov.NET" (sarov.net) and addresses in its zone — "Business Sarov on the Internet" (business.sarov.net), "Sarov Dating Service" (dating.sarov.net), "Sarov Association of Computer Sports" (scsa.sarov.net). portal.sarov.ru was not the only point of entry for the city: both sarov.ru and sarov.net are listed in the catalog as independent Sarov sites, and the second one is also captioned "Portal of the city of Sarov"[2].

The only home page snapshot: a photo contest

The text of the only surviving snapshot of the home page, taken on February 5, 2013, is entirely occupied by a single document — the rules of the 11th photo contest on tourism, "Why Do People Go to the Campfires?"[1] The contest was run by the Sports and Tourism Union of the city of Sarov and the municipal institution of supplementary education "Children and Youth Center"; its stated goals, as the home page reported, were "engaging city residents in a healthy lifestyle through tourist trips and hikes" and "developing the ecological and local-history direction of tourism activity"[1].

The dates given are exact: the contest runs from January 1 to December 30, 2011, and the jury begins its work on January 10, 2012. There are seventeen categories — from mountaineering and mountain tourism, water, ski and hiking tourism to "Breath of Nature," "Journeys and Expeditions," "Smiling on the Trail," "The Mysterious Stranger," "Photo Herbarium," "Photo Hunting" and "Ecological Poster"[1]. Each was accompanied by an explanation: "The Mysterious Stranger" — "an original photograph of strangers, men or women, encountered on the tourist trail or during journeys and expeditions"[1].

The submission requirements reflect the transition from paper to digital photography: no more than ten works per category were accepted from one author, the format was to be no smaller than 20×30 or 30×40 cm, "photographs in the 10x15 format are not admitted to the contest," and the image "must not show digits indicating the date and time it was taken." Works were not returned — except those for which a registration fee of 100 rubles per photograph had been paid. At the same time, all participants were required to submit an electronic version as well — "for creating the photo contest database and publishing the final albums"[1]. The contest was judged by a jury of 30–45 people, while in parallel there was "online voting for the submitted contest photographs" on the third-party site outwalk.ru and in an Odnoklassniki group[1].

Applications were accepted at Sarov addresses: the Sports and Tourism Union at 15 Yunosti Street and the Children and Youth Center at 43/2 Prospekt Muzrukova; the organizing committee's account was opened at JSCB "Sarovbiznesbank" on Silkina Street[1]. The page dates itself: the rules relate to the 2011 contest, the archive of best photographs runs through 2011, and at the bottom is the signature "Sandy Stepanov 2011"[1]. This means that by February 2013 the portal's home page had not been updated for more than a year.

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The portal entered the Nizhny Novgorod Internet through the nn.ru catalog, which gathered resources from the entire region, not just the regional capital. In a snapshot of the category "Projects: Internet: Portals and universal servers" from June 20, 2002, next to the portal's entry stands "Rating: 415" with a link to the counter.nn.ru Counter.nn.ru[2]. There are nine addresses in the category, and the portal is eighth in it: above it are nn.ru and nnov.ru (13,736 and 10,042), "R52 — the portal of Nizhny Novgorod business" (5,962), the Sarov "Portal Sarov.NET" (1,624), the "Information service www.Nizhny.ru Information Service (nizhny.ru)" (827), "All of Dzerzhinsk" (437) and "All of Nizhny Novgorod" (428)[2]. The figure depended on the date of the snapshot: in a snapshot of the neighboring category "Internet services" from April 25, 2002, the portal's rating is "216.1"[3]. The domain does not appear in the surviving samples of the counter.nn.ru counter itself, so its traffic cannot be judged from them; on the counting methodology, see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

In the surviving results table of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote for 2004, neither portal.sarov.ru nor other Sarov domains appear[4].

How it closed

The web archive index for the address portal.sarov.ru lists eighteen records, the latest of which is February 5, 2013[1]. There are no later snapshots; in the summary of our census the domain is marked as no longer existing. The closing date cannot be established more precisely: in substance the site stopped in 2011, while the address itself held out until at least early 2013.

Two things remain of the Sarov city portal: a line in the nn.ru catalog listing its sections, and a single archived page — the rules of the photo contest. The news, classifieds, forum, chat, guestbook and personal sections of the townspeople, for whose sake the portal was built in the first place, have survived nowhere.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2013 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, category «Projects: Internet: Portals and universal servers», 2002 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, category «Projects: Internet: Internet services», 2002 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet vote, 2004 (archive)