In the year 47 B.C., the citizens of Alexandria set fire to their renowned library and thus, the most important repository of knowledge, a collection of the fruit of human thought up to that period, was lost forever. Among the 700,000 scrolls burnt were the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Bible), Pythagoras' scientific drawings, the writings of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and all of the important works of the ancient scholars. Nowadays, it would be impossible to burn all the books with a single match and there is no danger of losing our global intellectual assets in an unfortunate accident. Today, the grief of parting with burnt books is replaced with a different kind of frustration that originates in our inability to navigate the sea of knowledge accumulated in the 2052 years that have passed since the time of that fire. Man's sorrow stems, therefore, from his inability to read all that was researched, written, and printed, and considered by many to be essential. In other words, the overabundance of information intensifies our feeling of helplessness.

Such a deep dive into history as a preface to describing the objective of an internet site would not have been warranted unless its purpose was so strategic. Shvoong wishes to scale a peak of historic significance, a kind of "cultural Everest". The site proposes to include among its pages no more nor less than a synopsis of human knowledge, and at the same time also offers the possibility to earn a living writing it. We are not dealing in charity, altruism or philanthropy. The site strives to serve as a profitable business for its operators.

Shvoong, therefore, beckons all literate people around the world, and says, Come, read and enjoy! and in the same breath also, Come, write and earn a living! The site addresses university students, high school students, academics, government officials, non-government functionaries, lawyers, scientists, homemakers, people who are bedridden, people who are healthy and just ordinary people who are restricted in their time and lifespan. All of them are citizens of the world, plagued with the daily bothers of life, dividing their attention sparingly, forced to gather the information they require in quantities they can assimilate, within the restrictions of the leisure time that is at their disposal. In short, everybody. At the same time, the site appeals also to advertisers who will be impressed with the huge arena that lacks circulation limits and calls out to them, Come on!

At present, no tool exists that responds to this vital need for summarization. All internet search engines repeatedly refer surfers back to the raging whirlpool of a disheartening surplus of information. Shvoong intends to throw a lifeline to those who are drowning in the sea of information, to serve as a tool that separates the chaff from the wheat, an instrument that differentiates between the signal and the noise.

The content of the Shvoong site does not purport to replace the originals. The site has no pretension of replacing the real thing - whether books or studies - with abstracts. Shvoong wishes to act as a cachet of required information for whomever needs information desperately and does not have a lot of time.

As to the content: texts on the Shvoong site are not written by experts. All abstracts are composed by random surfers, at their own initiative, in their own language. In order to encourage them to write, the site promises them payment. Shvoong realizes that not all surfers have a flair for writing. Some are likely to write horrible nonsense. However, the screening, filtering and rating are all done by the readers themselves, who are invited to surf, rate and grade. Thus, the site is constructed in an evolutionary manner, as the outcome of the collaboration between readers and writers, untouched by editors, rewriters, or proofreaders.

We at Shvoong anticipate hosting a multitude of readers and writers from all ends of the world and in practically all languages (37). We believe in the site's ability to constitute for such visitors both a home and a workplace, and to do so in an egalitarian spirit: Of the people, by the people, for the people.

Shvoong - Principles in Brief

1. The objective of the site is to summarize all that has been written throughout human history in the areas of literature and scientific research (in the Natural Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities). Each abstract will be available in three text-length formats: (i) up to 300 words; (ii) up to 600 words; and (iii) up to 900 words, according to the reader's preference, in almost every language. The site will also review the daily world press and present abstracts in the three aforementioned lengths.
2. The site offers its abstracts for reading free of charge.
3. After reading, readers are requested to rate the material on a five-point quality scale. Thus, they affect the filtering and grading of the texts in terms of quality.
4. All abstracts are written by random surfers in return for royalties.
5. Collection of materials and rating thereof is performed in an evolutionary manner. Surfers write, rate, filter and improve the quality of the materials offered on the site.
6. Writing takes place in all common languages, with an option for immediate automatic translation into 12 major languages. The quality of such automatic translations is, however, limited. Human translators, who are regular surfers, translate the texts at a slower pace (but yield higher quality results).
7. Translators also receive royalties for their work.
8. Payments to writers and translators are made from the income generated from the advertisements on the website, according to defined rules and an agreed formula.
9. The site's income is collected from the advertisers by means of an advertisement- monitoring program.
10. Unclaimed income (for instance, in the case of waived royalties) is donated to charity via the Shvoong Foundation.
11. Whenever possible, each abstract contains a link to its source, or to sites through which the source may be purchased.
12. The site format, as described here, is patent pending and may not be copied.

Remuneration Method

Shvoong will receive payments ("Royalties") from entities which advertise on the Site or from entities which facilitate the advertising of third parties' goods and services on the Site. Shvoong will be happy to pay registered users of the Site a portion of its Royalties, subject to the terms herein (the "Commission").

Shvoong shall pay each provider of Content 10% (ten percent) of the gross Royalties actually received by Shvoong in respect of pages upon which Content appears. Shvoong shall calculate this 10% (ten percent) in relation to the number of individual users who enter pages on which a piece of Content has been posted.

In addition to the above, if you translate any whole piece of Content from the original language of the Content as posted on the Site (the "Original Content") to another language, and that translation is subsequently posted on the Site, we shall pay you 5% (five percent) of the gross Royalties actually received by Shvoong in respect of the page upon which the translated Content appears, as calculated in accordance with the Calculation Standards; we shall pay the provider of the Original Content 5% (five percent) of the gross Royalties actually received by Shvoong in respect of the page upon which the translated Content appears, as calculated in accordance with the Calculation Standards

Translation

The Shvoong website exists in the following 36 languages: English, Chinese, French, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, German, Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Dutch, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Czech, Greek, Bulgarian, Turkish, Serbian, Farsi, Georgian, Uzbek, Moroccan, Thai, Malaysian, Vietnamese, Bengali, Indonesian, and Hebrew. The site's title index is updated daily and translated from English into 36 languages by remuneration-receiving surfers. At the same time, readers can use the automatic translation service, which offers a limited level of quality ("emergency format"). Shvoong surfers will be presented with the option of automatic translation into the following languages: English, French, German, Chinese (two dialects), Japanese, Dutch, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and Korean.

House Language

All surfers, located anywhere in the world, will be able to automatically read the site in their own native language, after the central computer identifies the language preferred by each surfer's own computer. The surfer will input the title (or article or author) in the Search Form and will receive the abstract in his or her language. If the material is only available in another language, a notice to that affect will be sent to the surfer. If required, the surfer will be given the option to translate the material immediately, using the automatic translation service, into one of the languages listed on the list of automatic translation languages. If the surfer is knowledgeable and motivated, he or she may also translate the text into his or her native language (for the surfer's own benefit and that of other readers) and earn Translation Royalties, totaling 5% of the translated page's profits, subject to the site rules. If the surfer opts to neither use the automatic translation service nor translate the material, he or she will have to wait for someone else on the network to do the favor of translating the required abstract. In order to expedite the translation process, any person wishing to read previously untranslated material can add a specific request to the site, such as "Please translate this for me".

Servers

Shvoong is hosted on a network of powerful servers that enable immediate response times to thousands of simultaneous participants. The abstracts themselves are saved on database servers equipped with fast search capabilities used to locate available information for surfers. In addition, the system relies on a designated server that supplies automatic translations using translation software by Systran, the world leader in online translations. The site itself was developed using Dot.Net technology and is based on an MS SQL Server 2000 database.

A Word to Advertisers

The Shvoong website appeals to the literate population of the world and the advertisements on it, which are text-based only (no graphics), are adapted to the textual content of the page on which they appear. Thus, an affinity is created between the advertiser and his or her natural target audience. In order that an advertisement will appear on the Shvoong site, the advertiser must subscribe to one of the internet advertising programs, such as Google or Overture, in accordance with their terms of payment.

Contact us

Should you encounter any difficulties while surfing the website, please send us go to the Contact Us link.

Founders

Avi Shaked. Born in Netanya, Israel. Married with 3 children. Earned a Bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from the Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheba. Shaked began his business career in the early 1980s as a representative of MCI, Inc. In 1995, he founded, and is the main shareholder of www.888.com, a company that is currently celebrating a decade of successful activity in the area of online gambling. In 2003, Shaked was among the initiators of the Geneva Agreement, which contributed to the realization of the concept of a permanent agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Avner Avrahami. Born in Netanya, Israel. Married with 2 children. Graduated from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design - Jerusalem. Avrahami worked at Kol Israel - Israel Broadcasting Authority, the weekly magazine Koteret Rashit (Headline) and the daily newspapers Maariv and Haaretz, in a variety of positions. Among other things, Avrahami served as editor of the two newspapers' weekend magazines and engaged in writing, editing, design, and illustration. Today, Avrahami writes the Family Affair column (together with photographer Reli Avrahami, his wife) published in the Haaretz Friday magazine.

Managing Director

Eyal Rivlin. Born in Kibbutz Tzora, Israel. Graduated from the Department of Law at the Academic College of Netanya. Rivlin served in various managerial positions in several internet companies abroad.