http://schema-root.org

I have been building a website for the past eight years that I hope will be useful to people who care about the world. It is an "encyclopedia of current events", currently with 14,000 topics. These each have current newsfeeds, and are all cross-referenced to each other, making it into what I hope will be a useful research resource for people who want to know what the heck is going on in the world.

It has been a major effort, obviously. Right now I am taking a little break from the development of the site in order to try to promote it among groups who I think might find it useful.

The truth is, it is not for everyone. I have focused on conflict areas of the world, regions of natural and man-made disasters, and the political situations in various countries, not the least of which the USA. You will find little reference to sports, entertainment, and the gadgetry that many news sites use to attract lucrative ads. I have tried to keep the site serious in tone, and not have it contribute to the problems of commercialism and materialism that are afflicting this planet at present. Also, you may notice a certain lack of links to hateful, racist, or otherwise rabid opinion. I assume that may easily be found elsewhere, if someone may happen to be doing research about that sort of thing.

Schema-Root.org gets around 6,000 hits per day currently, coming from all around the world, but mostly the US. For some unknown reason, its popularity is highest in New Zealand, followed by India. I have received email from the Turkish Embassy in Tashkent (government of Uzbekistan was censoring my page), from the US embassy in Cairo (general appreciation), from the families of deployed military (requests for information) and so on. I know that there are a number of people who use my site extensively, so I take that as a sign that I am doing something right, at least.

I hope you will have an opportunity to take a look the site. And please don't be fooled by the front page! Currently I am using the Common Dreams rss feed there, but inside the site you will find approximately 4,500 different news sources.

At the moment I am unable to provide access to my archives, but I am working on it. When available, it will provide access to approximately 10 million links to past stories. (I have six servers at home working on the situation day and night.)

If you find the site useful, I could use some help in the form of links to it -(the homepage, or any other page - pick a topic! I have a fairly robust caching system that I believe will be able to service perhaps a hundred thousand hits per day. I need to increase traffic in order to increase ad revenue, which is the only funding I have been able to develop for the site. My requests for voluntary "subscriptions" have gone completely unanswered. (Well, almost - I have two subscribers!) The truth is that people do not volunteer to pay for something that is given away for free. And I DO NOT want to charge anything for use of the site, as I know it is being used by many people who really cannot afford to pay. So, if you are able to give me a link, I'd appreciate it!

Finally, I am very open to suggestions about how I might improve the site, new topics, etc.. There is a "contact us" link on every page, so use it if you have anything to suggest.

Thanks, John Tinker