Digital Librarians & Statisticians

G-d bless the digital librarians and statisticians, wherever they may be in cyberspace. Just when I was ready to say something about not being able to measure all the information on the web, I came across this article on the "Trends in the Evolution of the Public Web, 1998-2002." This is an excellent resource for a number of my purposes, chiefly for placing the hate sites in the larger context of the web.

I also came across this review of Internet metrics and statistics. Unfortunately, this piece is plagued with link rot, but the general overview (and clues about where to look for further info), is invaluable.

There's also this piece from folks at Stanford and Princeton about a method for random sampling the web by using a random-IP-number generator. Fascinating for thinking about a sociology of the web in general, if not imminently useful for looking at hate groups online.

More directly relevant for my work is an analysis like this one of Italian fascists on the web. I especially like the idea deployed here of using web links to do a kind of social network analysis.