‘Yahooligans!’ Helps Keep Junior Net Surfers on Safe Turf

What’s a cyberhip parent to do?

You’re wary of censorship on the Internet (and you realize, unlike several headline-seeking public officials, that censorship is not likely to be effective on a medium that is international in scope and labyrinthine in nature), and you don’t want to withhold from your kids the very real benefits of using the Web for research, browsing and far-flung contacts with people of other cultures.

At the same time, you understandably don’t relish the thought they will come across the “Bound for Bondage” site or the home pages of various hate groups on the World Wide Web. Other than stationing yourself next to your child whenever he or she is online, there is little you can do to ensure your little surfer will not come across the more adult segments of the Web.

But, now you can at least provide them with a home base on the Web that is so entertaining, rich in topics and easy to use that they’ll be less likely to wander aimlessly in cyberspace. It’s “Yahooligans!” the new brainchild of the creators “Yahoo!”--the most popular of online Web directories.

“Yahoo!” was created by David Filo and Jerry Yang, two Stanford graduate engineering students who, in the early days of the Web (1994, practically ancient history in Internet time), posted a list of their favorite sites on the Web, which became hugely popular.

Eventually, Filo and Yang attracted advertisers to their page and an all-important alliance with Netscape Communications. They turned their list-making hobby into a full-time business and “Yahoo!” now features thousands of links to Web sites, all conveniently organized by category. You can find the basic directory at https://www.yahoo.com.

Unlike “Yahoo,” which categorizes but does not judge sites on the basis of their content, the sites listed on the recently debuted “Yahooligans!” have all been screened to ensure they are appropriate for the target audience in the 8-to-14 age bracket.

At the site of the basic directory (https://www.yahooligans.com), kids will find a page full of cool, witty graphics that makes “Yahoo!” seem quite dull by comparison. They can then click on one of eight basic categories, including “Art Soup,” “Entertainment,” “Science and Oddities,” “Around the World” and “Sports and Recreation.”

In the “Yahoo!” tradition, clicking on them will lead to more topics and then dozens, if not hundreds of sites. For example, “Around the World” leads to headings such as “Countries,” “Cultures,” “Holidays” and “Travel.” Clicking on “Cultures” gives you a gateway to 36 sites, including “Abwenzi African Studies,” “The Hindu Universe,” “Arctic Winter Games,” “MayaQuest” and “Find Your Name in Hawaiian.”

One of the handiest categories, under the “School Bell” heading, will probably be “Homework Answers,” which leads to sites concerning geography, history, math and the like. It even directs you to sites where you can leave e-mail questions for experts in a field. One of the most ambitious of these is sponsored by the New Jersey Networking Infrastructure in Education Project, but I would be wary of any advice it offered. On its home page, one of its links is to “Liturature.”

Frequent “Yahooligans!” surfers can click a button to check out new sites on the service, or they can choose “Random” to take them to whatever site happens to pop up on the computer. You never know what “Yahooligans!” site “Random” is going to lead you too, but I haven’t landed on one yet that hasn’t been instructive or amusing in some way. And they are definitely not strictly kids sites--they’re simply sites that are absent of content the “Yahooligans!” folks believe might not be appropriate for preteens.

So, with the introduction of “Yahooligans!” your kids and you get the best of both worlds. They still have the freedom to sneak around and check out some naughty sites (and it’s going to be hard to keep them from doing so in any case), but at the same time, they’re provided with a directory that’s so useful and entertaining that they’ll spend a lot of quality time there.

I know I will.

* Cyburbia’s e-mail address is david.colker@latimes.com.