Questions?

People often send me mail asking me for more information about skaters, events, equipment, rinks, or whatever. I'm sorry, but all of the online materials I know about are already linked into this page, and I simply don't have the time to dig up answers to individual requests from other sources.

If you have questions that aren't answered in the FAQ lists or other links on my pages, it's better to post them to usenet than to send them to me personally. If you are looking for general information about a skater or event, try using a web search utility (like the one at Alta Vista) instead of expecting other people to do your research for you.

Some other sources of information are US Figure Skating, Skate Canada, ISU, the books and magazines listed in the References FAQ, your local public library, or the phone book.

Please note that many of the pages I have links to are maintained by other people, and you should contact them directly if you have comments or questions about their pages.

I get a lot of mail from people complaining that I don't have any information about or pictures of their favorite skater. Generally, my response to this is that if you're a fan of a particular skater and think they deserve a fan page of their own on the web, you should set one up yourself instead of expecting me to do it. (After all, it's your favorite skater, not mine.)

Also, I'm sorry, but I do not run a service for making copies of videotapes of televised skating events. Please read the FAQ about this before e-mailing or posting such requests.

My web pages are now hosted by Dreamhost.com.

Disclaimers

My skating web pages are a personal project and represent my personal opinions only. I am also acting as webmaster for the World Skating Federation (WSF), but that is a separate web site and the WSF has no involvement with SkateWeb. None of my opinions expressed on SkateWeb should be taken as representing the WSF or the positions of the WSF in any way.

I put these pages together for my own entertainment. While other people may also find them entertaining, educational, or useful, that is not my primary purpose or goal. I don't really care if you find things that offend you by following the links from my pages. Parents, if you are concerned about what your child is viewing on the Internet, I think it is your responsibility to supervise them.

My pages contain some links to commercial sites and other information about skating-related businesses. I do this as a courtesy and because I think the information is of general interest to skaters and/or fans, without implying any particular endorsement of the businesses or products. The only paid advertising material on this site are the sponsor buttons that are clearly identifiable as advertisements.

Copyrights and copying/linking permissions

I have tried to indicate sources, copyrights, and other copying restrictions on specific materials used in my pages. The original articles, artwork, and photos on my site are copyrighted, so please don't republish them without my explicit permission. See the photo use policy below.

Please don't copy the SkateWeb logo.

You may link to my web pages (it's not necessary to ask my permission first). However, you may not embed my web pages in a subframe with your own menus and/or advertising banners attached.

Also, please do not mirror my skating pages, distribute them on CD-ROM, or embed them in your own web pages in other ways (such as by filtering the content of the pages themselves).

Photo use policy

Photos which I have taken and published on my web site are copyrighted and are provided for personal viewing only. I'm not a professional photographer, and I don't sell prints of my photos, or rights to publish them in magazines or use them for advertising or other commercial purposes.

Exception: Skaters may republish my photos of them on their own personal web sites, subject to the following conditions:

• Photos may be used on skaters' personal web sites only, not fan or commercial sites. In other words, the skater (and/or their family) must be directly involved with running or providing content for the web site, and it isn't just a fan site that claims to have been "blessed" as an official site, or a site run by a professional agent, promoter, or publicist.

• Skater web sites using my photos must be open to the public and listed in SkateWeb's directory pages.

• A copyright notice and link to SkateWeb must be included on every page where my photos appear, e.g.,

  Photo copyright © SkateWeb

• Please send me an e-mail with your web site URL first before you use my photos, so that I can keep track of who has them.

Privacy issues

This site does not use cookies or collect personal information such as e-mail addresses from visitors. I share aggregate server statistics (such as the total number of page hits per day) with advertisers, but not detailed server log information such as the IP addresses of individual users visiting this site.

Submissions

If you have a link you want me to add to my pages, please send mail to me directly instead of assuming I will see announcements posted to the newsgroups or mailing lists (because I don't always have time to keep up with them).

Here are a few guidelines for submitting link requests:

• Be sure to include your URL in your request! You'd be amazed at how many people ask me to link to their pages, but forget to include the page's address in their e-mail. It's also a real nuisance when people send me the wrong URL for their page.

• If you want me to update an existing link to a new URL instead of adding a new link, please make it clear by telling me where I have your old page listed and/or the old URL.

• I don't have the time or resources to publish press releases or similar announcements for other people or organizations on my own web pages. Sorry. If you have a web page for an event, I'll be happy to link to it. Otherwise I suggest you post your announcement to the various skating message boards, mailing lists, or newsgroups.

• If you have several related pages, my informal policy is to list only one page per topic per person. (For example, there have been people who have had multiple fan pages devoted to the same skater at different web hosting services or under different accounts. I'll only list one of them.)

• I do not have time to update my web pages every day. I normally process requests to add or change links in batches once or twice a week. Sending me multiple e-mail requests won't make it happen any faster. If you want me to link to a site for an event, please try to get me the link at least a week in advance.

• My Elite Skaters links are for elite skaters, which I define (more or less) to be "skaters who have competed in their country's senior national championships and/or who have been chosen to represent their country in international competition". If you are a non-elite participant skater with a web page about your own skating, I will add your link to my Participant Skaters page instead.

• A lot of people have been putting up skater web pages that they claim are "official". My criteria for identifying a web page as "official" is that the skaters themselves (or perhaps their publicist or agent) supply the information for the page, approve its content, or or otherwise take an active role in its design. On the other hand, I don't have time to personally verify that all the pages that claim to be "official" really represent the thoughts of the skaters involved, so please take such claims with a grain of salt. Skaters, I strongly suggest you have a signed contract with your webmaster instead of relying only on the continued good will of a fan to maintain your web site.

• I won't add links to pages that consist primarily of materials (such as photographs) plagiarized from other people's web sites. It's very rude to steal other netters' work in this way. Plus, why should people bother to visit your page when it doesn't have anything new on it? The best web pages are the ones with original content: articles you have written yourself, and your own photography or artwork.

• I won't link to "hate" pages or pages that suggest some sort of stalker-ish obsession with a skater.

• I don't like to link to private web sites/mailing lists/message boards, especially those where you must not only register to view the content, but where approval from a moderator is required to register. The purpose of the directory listings on SkateWeb is to provide links to useful information that is accessible to everyone, not to promote private clubs. If you are setting up a skating-related message board or mailing list, I encourage you to make your site or web archives viewable by everyone even if registration is required to post.

• I won't link to skaters' personal, non-skating-related web sites. This includes pages on social networking sites like Myspace, school or employment-related web pages, etc.

• It's usually a mistake to ask me to announce your web page when it's still under heavy construction. You will get a lot of visitors when I first announce your page, but if folks don't find anything interesting there, or if they get frustrated by broken links or empty pages, they won't come back again later to see your page when it's done.

• Try to design your web page so that it is useful to people who don't use fancy browser features like plug-ins, or who don't have a high-speed Internet connection. In particular:
  • Don't rely solely on Flash or buttons that require Javascript or Java for navigation around your site -- provide a plain-text menu, too.

  • Don't go crazy with huge inline images and embedded sound clips on your front page. It's not reasonable to expect people on a dialup connection to wait two or three minutes to download 500K of junk just to get an overview of what you have on your site. I suggest about 50K as the maximum total size for the content on a page. If you have bigger images or sound clips, make a link to them instead of embedding them directly in your page, and give people some warning or hint that when they click on the link it's going to take a while to load.

  • If you want to shrink a big photograph to a thumbnail size on your page, do not rely on HTML image scaling to do this, because that still requires everyone who views your page to download that original huge image file. Instead, use an image manipulation program to shrink it and save it as a smaller file which will load much faster.

  • I can't read blinking text and flashing animated GIFs drive me crazy.

Sponsorship and donations

At this time, I am not accepting banner advertisements on SkateWeb.

If you would like to do something to help support SkateWeb just because you find it a useful resource, consider buying a T-shirt from the Frogs On Ice Store.

Who is this crazy person?

My name is Sandra Loosemore. I've never been more than a recreational skater myself, but I've been a fan of the sport for many years. (If you want to know how long, go look at my page about Toller Cranston.)

In "real life", I have engineering degrees from Michigan Tech and the University of Utah, and I work as a software engineer for CodeSourcery. I've also been known to do some technical writing now and then. In particular, I literally wrote the book on Unix systems programming.

Send me mail

My e-mail contact information is on this page. You can also visit my personal home page.