novgorod.by.ru was a Nizhny Novgorod gaming and entertainment site called "Virtual © Poligon", listed in the nn.ru directory with the description "Dating Mail Music mp3 Money Game clubs Games in Nizhny Novgorod"[1]. The site was run on behalf of the Nizhny Novgorod computer club "Virtual © Poligon", with addresses on Komarova Street, 7 (opposite the tax inspectorate, next to the registry office, by the "Banya" tram stop) and on Bolshaya Pechyorskaya Street, 25 (near NIRFI and the Water Academy), and phone number (8312) 52-99-39[2][4]. In a snapshot from March 30, 2002, the page carried the copyright notice "© 2000 Andrey Jdanov", which dates the project's launch to 2000[2].

What the site looked like and what it offered

The home page bore the heading "THE GREAT COUNTRY OF GAMES OF THE 21ST CENTURY" and the subheading "VIRTUAL © POLIGON". The menu included dating, horoscopes, anonymous mail, jokes, games, a "Pokemon" section, mp3 music, the "Avtoradio" radio stream, prices for GAZ and VAZ cars, a software archive, literature and study materials (essays, Ozhegov's explanatory dictionary, texts of laws and the Constitution), codes for IRDETO-format satellite television, steel product quotations and currency pair (FOREX) rates, a REUTERS news feed, classified ads from the "Iz Ruk v Ruki" newspaper, a tourism section, and information on obtaining a US green card[2]. The computer club itself was separately advertised — round-the-clock operation, games on computers and Sony PlayStation, sale and exchange of discs and gaming accessories[2]. Payment was accepted through the WebMoney system (wallet z223940865187), and feedback went through the sos2000@mail.nnov.ru mailbox, which was also listed as the contact for webmaster Andrey Zhdanov[2].

The site ran a chat called "Krovatka" (described as "LOVE-my-LOVE", billed as "the most popular chat in Russia"), and also hosted click-based banner affiliate programs (LOTTOFOREVER, PRIMELOTTERY) with payouts made through the subsidiary company GenerationX-fashions.com[2].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The page belonged to a network of mirrors of the same project: the "Site mirror" list on the home page itself named dozens of addresses on poligon.*, sos2000.*, love-my-love.narod.ru and other domains, novgorod.by.ru itself among them[2]. The same page also gave a ranked list of Nizhny Novgorod computer clubs — Bi-Play, "Gladiator", "Zvezda", "Inferno", "Kondor", "Orlyonok", "Virtual © Poligon", "Polye Kholmy", "Portal", "Spektr", "Ultra" — pointing to a shared rating "in Nizhny Novgorod"[2]. The same clubs — Bi-Play, "Gladiator", "Kondor", "Orlyonok", "Spektr" and "Virtual @ Poligon" — are also listed in an independent listing of Nizhny Novgorod computer clubs on the gaming portal ProPlay, where "Poligon" appears as a hall with 12 computers: the location on Komarova Street, 7 in the Leninsky district had a courtyard entrance, while the premises on Bolshaya Pechyorskaya, previously occupied by NIRFI, was later taken over by VShEK[4]. At the same time, in the preserved census the domain appears in the nn.ru directory as a standalone entry with no activity data: no votes or ranking records for it are noted in the collected Counter.nn.ru data, and the project is not linked in the preserved materials to the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day[1].

How it closed

By the time of the next preserved snapshot, dated September 15, 2010, the domain's content had changed completely: the page no longer had anything to do with the gaming club and instead advertised a Nizhny Novgorod taxi-ordering service, with the phone number +7(831) 4-144-377 and other contact details for the "Guild of Taxi Drivers" dispatch service[3]. This gap in subject matter between the 2002 and 2010 snapshots makes it impossible to reliably trace the fate of the original "Virtual © Poligon" club site — it is possible the domain had already passed to a different owner by 2010[3]. No later snapshots survive in the census materials; at the time this article was prepared, the domain was listed as being for sale.

Sources

  1. novgorod.by.ru (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page snapshot, 2002 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page snapshot, 2010 (archive)
  4. proplay.ru — Clubs / Computer clubs / Nizhny Novgorod