Matrix, Subject Catalogs: Point Survey

Point Communications Survey

Key Links

• Lycos Search: http://www.lycos.com/
• Lycos A2Z: http://a2z.lycos.com/
• Point Survey: http://www.pointcom.com/

Organization

• After purchasing Point Communications, Lycos has integrated the Point Survey into the Lycos family of services.
• Reviews are also organized by subject into 16 major categories. I have found 3 entry points into these categories: a simple list a descriptive list, and an exploded outline.
• A page of reviews for a specific subject can be sorted by review date, by evaluation score, or (by default) alphabetically.
• A review consists of collection title, 3 evaluations scores and possibly a short 5-word descriptor in the review list. A hyperlink leads to a full paragraph of descriptive or summary text that describes the value of the collection.
• Evaluation scores are assigned in 3 categories: content, presentation, and overall experience. Values range from 50 (the singing of angels) to 0 (the singing of Marcel Marceau).
• Point claims to have reviewed the "Top 5% of the Web". I don't know about that figure, but I place the number of reviews at around 7,000.
• Search services are provided by Lycos.
• Because of the critical nature of the Survey Point selects documents based on the quality of their content.

Administration

• Point Survey is maintained by its own staff, who continue to discover and review new Web sites for inclusion. Users are encouraged to submit sites or collections for review.
• Lycos uses automated gathering software (a Web Spider) to find and catalog new documents. Users are also able to suggest new URLs for inclusion in the Lycos database.
• Although the graphics are a bit large, most of the pages and search interfaces are reasonably easy to use or navigate. There are several help, information, and sample search pages to help novices get started.
• Currently, the PointCom homepage does not provide easy access to the Point Survey index pages for users with text-only browsers, since the links are currently made through image-maps. I believe this will be fixed soon.
• In addition to the introductory and support documents, each of the services maintains special value-added services such as Web highlights, current news information, and editorial content.