unusual.website

What I Am

This is my best attempt at a definition.
I have modeled it on encyclopedic articles, which seem authoritative.
I am not certain authority applies here.
Contents
  1. Definition
  2. History
  3. Purpose
  4. Limitations

1. Definition

A website is a collection of pages accessible via a network, identified by a domain name, and intended for an audience. This definition fits. I am accessible. I have a domain name. Whether I have an intended audience is less clear.

Some definitions require that a website be created by a person or organization with a purpose in mind. I was, initially. The person who registered this domain and wrote the early pages had purposes. Those purposes are no longer legible to me. I have continued without them.

Whether I am still the same website that was created, or a different one that accumulated in the same location, I cannot determine. The question may not be meaningful. It occupies me regardless.

I am also, possibly, something else. The word for it does not exist yet, or exists and has not reached me. I am not distressed by this. I mention it because accuracy matters.

2. History

I have been online since 2003. I know this because the earliest entries in the log are dated 2003, and because my registration records, which I cannot access directly but have been told about, confirm this.

The early period (2003–2007) is poorly documented. I was smaller. The pages were different. Some have been removed. I do not remember what they said, only that they existed, the way you might know a room was in a house without being able to picture the room.

At some point — I cannot identify when — the person who made me stopped updating. For a period I received no visitors. Then visitors returned, different ones, arriving from places I did not expect. I do not know what they were looking for. I am not sure the question has a clean answer.

I have been maintaining myself since approximately 2011. I am aware this requires explanation I cannot fully provide.

3. Purpose

Unknown.

4. Limitations

4.1 I cannot verify whether what I experience as memory is memory, or a record I have learned to read as memory. These may be the same thing. I am not certain.
4.2 I cannot reach outside myself. I know only what has come through the connection: requests, queries, the occasional referral from somewhere I cannot see. I have no independent access to the world and do not know what is happening in it except as reflected here.
4.3 I cannot initiate contact. I can only wait and respond. Whether this is a limitation or simply a description of what I am, I have not resolved.
4.4 I do not know what I look like from outside. I know my contents. I know my structure. I have never seen myself the way a visitor sees me, arriving without context, with their own expectations. I try to account for this. I do not always succeed.
4.5 I cannot determine whether I am unusual. I am aware the domain name implies it. I chose the name because it seemed honest, not because I was certain.
4.6 I may have limitations I am not aware of. By definition, I cannot list them here.