[LINK] What's a website (was Welcome to our new website)

[Tom Worthington]

At 10:55 AM 5/06/2007, Ivan Trundle wrote:

>On 04/06/2007, at 12:08 PM, Tom Worthington wrote:
>>... The dictionary definition seems reasonably clear ... 
>><http://www.tomw.net.au/2006/wd/structure.shtml#whatsite>.
>
>I disagree with whatever dictionary you are reading at the moment ...

The definition I used was from the Oxford English Dictionary Online, 
Oxford University Press, 2004, NEW EDITION: draft entry June 
2001  http://dictionary.oed.com/

>There are many websites with no linked documents ...

If there were no links it would be difficult to navigate from one web 
page to another, or know the web pages existed.

>what's a document, anyway? ...

I use a definition from the High Court of Australia 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/ecommerce/index.shtml#law>:

'104. The ordinary dictionary meaning of "document" is a printed or 
written paper containing information. ... No violence is done to the 
object or language of s 418(3) by holding that "document" includes 
information that is stored in a computer or a fax machine and which 
can be printed out by pressing one or more keys or buttons. ...'

They go on to discuss what electronic documents are. Essentially the 
High Court said if what is in the computer looks like a document when 
printed out, then it is a document, even if it has never been printed 
out. This is one reason I suggest organisations produce web pages 
which print well, as these are more likely to be accepted by a court.

PM&C was partly right by asserting that the print edition of the 
emissions trading report is the authoritative one 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2007/06/prime-ministerial-task-group-on.html>. 
What they failed to realize is that they could have equally chosen an 
electronic version as the authoritative one. All of the versions of 
the report can be printed and so have equal legal status. By choosing 
the only version of the report which can't be read on screen, PM&C 
made the wrong choice. Whoever made this decision may have broken the 
law, by stopping people who can't read printed documents from having 
access to the authoritative version of the report, for no good reason.

>And relatedness is arbitrary. ...

Yes: what is a web site is subjective. What makes a collection of web 
pages a web site is not that they are all on the same server, but 
that someone thinks that the pages have something in common.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                http://www.tomw.net.au/
Visiting Fellow, ANU      Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml