The Heartland Community Leaders of GeoCities took the initiative to help homesteaders develop accessible web sites in accordance with the "Bobby" standards, then Yahoo purchased GeoCities and the excellent "Blue Print" which GeoCities featured was dropped. Eventually Yahoo also dropped the Community Leadership Program.
When Yahoo! absorbed GeoCities in July 1999, Yahoo decided to make the whole neighborhoods and homesteads theme defunct and dismantle the Community Leaders program due to possible legal concerns. Yahoo used URLs to tie in with users' Yahoo IDs (each Geocities user got a Yahoo ID).
Thankfully, existing Geocities users got to keep their Homestead Neighborhood URL too, and their pages could be viewed with either URL is why you might stumble across one today. The first neighborhood created was Hollywood.
Although the practice of using volunteers had become somewhat commonplace, the Labor Department investigation of AOL and the class-action suit (May 1999) raised concerns among other companies that rely on volunteers about how their businesses might be affected by a widespread backlash. The statement shown below by GeoCities in its SEC filing, prior to the acquisition by Yahoo, was before the adverse ruling in the case of AOL.
"GeoCities does not believe that any of its practices in connection with the use of volunteers in its business is in violation of any labor laws; however, to the extent that the Department of Labor makes an adverse determination in the AOL matter, it could materially and adversely affect the combined company's business and financial results," GeoCities said in a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Bari Nirenberg served with distinction as leader of the Heartland Community at GeoCities and met regularly with her co-liaisons and the other liaisons. Bernie Howe and Denny Lancaster served as community leaders in the various neighborhoods of Heartland like Creek, Woods and Farm. Being little boys at heart these two encouraged Bari to also embrace building accessibility compliant web pages. Because of Bari's influence and example, the "what seemed a good idea at the present" became generally accepted.
We can not help but wonder how much more rapidly "doing what was right" would have spread if the Community Leadership program at GeoCities had been allowed to continue at Yahoo.
Denis Wolford established WebTech University which still thrives. He too was influenced by Bari and the overall goals of the CL program-helping others help themselves. When Bari resigned as Heartland Liaison, Denis stepped in and kept everything running smoothly. Then when the CL program was dropped by Yahoo, WebTech University just kept on training anyone who wish to avail themselves of the courses which were offered.
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Copyright:1986-2007