roman.nnov.ru was the personal home page of Roman Mitin in the Nizhny Novgorod domain zone nnov.ru, existing at least from late 2001[3]. The author identified himself as a third-year student of the Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics (VMK), majoring in "applied informatics," and ran the site himself: the signature on the home page read "Autor & WebMaster: Roman Mitin," with the email address mitin@roman.nnov.ru and the Fidonet network address 2:5015/185.6[1]. The site entered our census from the nn.ru directory, where it was described briefly as "Roman Mitin's home page."

What the site looked like

The surviving snapshot of the home page is dated June 10, 2003, and is titled "Roman Mitin's Home Page (2003)"[1]. The layout was typical of personal pages of the time: a text menu in square brackets, duplicated at the top and bottom, with an annotated list of sections below it. The menu had eight items besides the home page — "News," "Studies," "Programs," "Sport," "Essays," "Computer Science," "Projects," "Review of Events"[1].

The home page explained the content of each section. "News" promised news of "the life of third-year students of the VMK Faculty, applied informatics major"; "Studies" offered materials, cheat sheets, teaching aids, exam questions, textbook pages, and problem sets. The "Programs" section was set aside for software developed with the author's participation, with downloads, registration, and support for registered users. "Essays" contained, as the home page put it, "my essays and term papers," while "Computer Science" was described as a section devoted to computer science, with foundational and reference information[1].

Two sections went beyond academic matters. "Sport" was devoted, in the site's own wording, to "Jiu-Jitsu and other martial arts," with the author noting that the topic "would be of interest both to professionals and to people far removed from sport." "Review of Events" was reserved for personal commentary — "my opinion on what is happening around us. Culture, elections, and much more" — with a direct disclaimer: "This is only my subjective opinion. But I really do think so"[1].

At the bottom of the page stood a condition for reprinting: "When using materials, a link to the site and the author is required"[1]. The surviving text contains no address, no phone number, and no visitor counters.

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site belongs to the mass layer of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet of the early 2000s — student and amateur home pages registered in the nnov.ru zone and kept alive by one person's interest. Roman.nnov.ru does not appear in the results of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote of 2004: the results table contains no such address[2]. The site is also absent from the surviving samples of the Counter.nn.ru rating; it entered the census not through the counter but through the nn.ru directory's classifier — for more on how that sample is constructed, see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

A characteristic detail of the era is the coexistence of the web and Fidonet: alongside his email address, the author listed the Fidonet address 2:5015/185.6[1]. For personal pages of the late 1990s and early 2000s, such a dual signature was common.

How it closed

Our data do not record an exact closing date. The web archive lists 36 captures of the home page address, the earliest dating to November 28, 2001[3]; only one substantive snapshot survives, from which the description of the site was reconstructed — from June 2003[1]. By the time of the census the domain no longer responded, and our materials contain no information about the page moving to another address.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet vote, 2004 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Snapshots of the home page in the web archive (archive)