Started on 10th January 1995
Richard Kimber
| Started on 10th January 1995 | |
Richard Kimber |
The website started life as www.psr.keele.ac.uk on 10th January 1995 on the server run by the University of Keele Computer Centre, and I should like to thank its staff, and especially the webmanagers for their help and patience over the years. In August 2009 the website was transferred to a commercial platform justhost.com and the URL became http://www.politicsresources.net/
The pages are put together on a 4GB AMD Phenom2 X4 workstation under Linux (Ubuntu 9.10). I try to use various browsers (but mainly Firefox, and Opera, and sometimes IE6 and IE7). I use Olivier Sessink's excellent Bluefish as my main editor, although if I am preparing a long document I may put it through Microsoft's Word 2003 in the first instance, and then tidy it up with Bluefish. I try to stick to the HTML standards as best I can, though I admit to cutting some corners when under pressure; and I try to make my pages accessible by as many browsers as possible (though there are limits: cf issues with IE8). Many of the election data files are created or modified either using Bash shell scripts or home-grown programs written in Pascal, using the Free Pascal Compiler. Such graphics as are used are mainly prepared in Gimp 2.6 under Linux, though I sometimes use Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 or Xara3D running under Windows XP.
I am happy to receive any emailed criticism of the technical aspects of the pages, as well as their substantive content.
This is quite a large site for one person to maintain and expand and still have a life, so if anyone is interested and willing to offer regular (unpaid) help, please email me. Extra help with an aspect of the site would free me to make quicker progress with various projects, such as putting all the UK general election results online. A few suggestions on how best to help may be found here.
My general principle in choosing what to include has been my own personal perception of a site's relevance to Political Science (either from a teaching or a research point of view). I do not normally include any links to sites that I have not personally visited. Occasionally, I come across a site that appears to be relevant, but its server's response is so poor that I do not include it, on the admittedly somewhat dubious principle that if I can't get into it, others will also have problems. With really interesting sites, I do try several times.
Of course, I am faced with the perennial problem of URLs becoming defunct and, although regular checks are run with the W3C link checker, one problem is that links that seem OK to the checker may actually have changed so that they link to irrelevant or inappropriate websites. I am very grateful for the notes people send me when they spot this has happened. The site is just too large for me to re-check each link personally. I have automated the link checking so that all the current webpages (i.e. excluding the pages that are archive pages, which I don't update) are checked once every three months. This may not be ideal, but it does leave me time to create new resources - and to have a life.
Although I don't have the time to provide an individual service for finding information on the web (and I invariably just ignore such requests, especially the ones that look like an appeal for me to write their essays or do their homework for them), I am willing to be responsive to suggestions for what URLs and topics I might include. If you have a suggestion, please email me, but bear in mind that I am interested in sites relevant to Political Science, and I do not generally include pages that just represent an individual's political outlook (though I exclude blogs here), or that are primarily commercial. With blogs, I try to keep to those that provide useful information, and not just personal opinion.
Long term visitors, since January 1995, may have noticed the appearance in Feb 2007 of advertisements on the site. I have resisted this for a long time and for the last 11 years (apart from the hosting, which has been done by Keele) have borne the costs of running the site myself. Now that I am living entirely on pension income, I thought it was time to find some way of defraying the hardware, software, hosting, and ISP connection costs. I have tried to keep the impact of the adverts as discrete as possible. If anyone has any other suggestions for generating income (e.g. through sponsorship, grants, or philanthropy) please get in touch 
