Some information about the author

Peter-Paul Koch
Born 1970; lifelong resident of Amsterdam
ppk@xs4all.nl

After having finished studying Ancient History (Greeks & Romans) at the University of Amsterdam, I tried to find a job as a teacher. Unfortunately, there was no demand for teachers of history at all.

I kept myself busy by researching the historical truth behind the Nibelungen and the work of Heinz Ritter-Schaumburg. I plan to write a thesis on this subject.
I have applied for a research grant at the University of Amsterdam, but it was refused because the subject was not interesting enough.

After two years on social welfare and a little drugs, I decided it was time to change careers and earn some easy money in website-design, for which I needed some project to teach myself fluent HTML and JavaScript.

To make Ends meet Means (and vice versa), I decided to set up a website discussing the Nibelungen and Ritter. When starting to design, I unexpectedly solved the ancient problem of presenting hyper-footnotes on the Web by accidentaly inventing SUFI.

This, in turn, has led to some thoughts about designing scientific websites.

Studying the worst sites on the part of the Web I know (mainly history and Ancient Germanic related sites), I have distilled...

The Three Commandments of Designing Scientific Websites

  • Thou shalt not present thy material in a way to enlighten the ignorant. Instead, thou shalt fling hideous lumps of undifferentiated ASCII at thy peers.
  • Thou shalt not give any comments when presenting hyperlinks. In addition, thou shalt present only such tables of hyperlinks as are cleverly construed to lead to even more tables of hyperlinks.
  • Thou shalt under no circumstance place a short summary at the top of thy pages.

I hereby call upon all scientists to give some little thought to the actual users of their websites. I hope some ideas I have used in this site will spread on the Web, thus reducing illegibility by a significant margin.

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