Ostrie.ru ("Ostrie.ru," in its later years "Ostriyo") was a joke-sharing and social site that operated from 2001 to 2021, with a break in the first half of the 2010s. Its standing motto and part of the header, for all its years, remained the phrase "This is not for dummies"[2]. The earliest pages saved by the web archive are dated September 24, 2001; by then the site had already been running for more than a month — the leader of the authors' rating had about 25,000 points[1].

The project's connection to the Nizhny Novgorod Internet can be traced through two documents. In the directory of the Nizhny Novgorod counter service Counter.nn.ru, the site was listed under "Humor" with the description "Jokes. Forum. Chat," and the card's owner was listed as "NN.RU Internet Company" — the company behind the NN.RU portal[4]. In a published list of eleven moderators, two, including the "chief moderator," were listed as residents of Nizhny Novgorod, with the rest from Moscow, Zelenograd, Samara, Tuapse, and Kharkiv[5].

A virtual club

To the question "What is www.ostrie.ru?" the "Frequently Asked Questions" section answered: "It's a virtual club for fans of clever jokes"[5]. A registered member would submit a joke, and others would rate it from 1 to 5; points were awarded to the joke, to its author, and to the voter themselves. Authors of the five best jokes of the day, week, and month received bonuses of 100, 300, and 1,000 points, and total points determined a rank: from "Novice" through "Joke-teller" (over 1,000), "Experienced joke-teller" (over 5,000), "Cool storyteller" (over 10,000), and "Master of jokes" (over 30,000), up to "Honorary Ostrie member" (over 50,000)[5].

Moderators penalized users for profanity, advertising, rating manipulation, and flooding, with the penalty for foul language set at 200 points and not subject to appeal. A separate line in the rules covered bonuses "for offline meetups of Ostrie members"[5]. Everything happening was displayed on the "Ostrie from the inside" page — a continuous feed of events such as "Anonim voted for joke N45325 (+1) by author E-tch (+3) and rated it 3"[3].

Services

By the mid-2000s several services had grown up around the joke feed. The top menu listed chat, a WAP version, funny photos, dating, flash games, forums, diaries, private messages, an email subscription to jokes, and a favorites section; a mail service also operated there, with mailboxes on the domains @ostrie.ru, @mailgate.ru, @pobox.ru, and @msx.ru[7]. Diaries were set up as a "diary-forum": a user would claim a free username of lowercase Latin letters, digits, hyphens, and underscores up to 20 characters long, get one diary per person, and become its moderator[8].

The joke feed could be embedded on other sites: the "Jokes for your site" section provided code for a block with settings for width, colors, quantity, and selection — new, random, or the best of the day, week, and month[6][6]. A third-party developer released a ready-made module based on this export for the SLAED CMS system[9]. Jokes also spread by hand: in Anekdot.ru's May 25, 2005 issue of repeated jokes, one carried the source note "from www.ostrie.ru"[23].

Move to "Moskva.Com"

By 2007 "Ostrie" existed as a "community" within the "Moskva.Com" portal: the header now included "Members," "Join the community," and "Candidates," and the footer carried the copyright "Moskva.com"[11]. The community described itself this way: "A community of connoisseurs of good humor. Amateurs come here and become professionals"[10]. From January 2008 the address ostrie.ru issued a permanent redirect to ostrie.moskva.com[12]; the subportal itself, with its joke feed, operated until April 2011[13].

Other hands, then a return

The domain was then occupied by unrelated sites for several years: in 2012-2013 by a news portal built on the DataLife Engine, carrying a feed of federal news and the copyright "Ostrie.Ru 2012"[14], and in 2014-2015 by a site about the Russia-France cross-cultural year[15]. By early 2016 the site had been replaced by a one-line placeholder reading "We'll be back," with the contact address wwwnnru@gmail.com[16].

The placeholder did not last long: by April 7, 2016, a newly rebuilt joke site called "Ostriyo" was already running at the address[17]. In 2017 it recruited new members with the announcement "We invite joke authors and 'raters'!" and admitted: "This aging site is looking for talented authors"[18]. For the last fifteen months the home page's content did not change — the snapshots from April 25, 2020[19] and July 29, 2021[20] are identical. The July snapshot is the last one showing the site actually loading: by October 6, 2021, the address redirected to a client-suspension page at the hosting provider ActiveCloud[21]. By May 2025 the domain served a page from the registrar RU-CENTER stating that the registration of ostrie.ru had expired[22].

Home page by year

Encyclopedia research: Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Ostrie.ru, "Best joke-tellers" — web archive snapshot, September 24, 2001 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Ostrie.ru, home page — web archive snapshot, January 18, 2002 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Ostrie.ru, "Ostrie from the inside" — web archive snapshot, August 2, 2002 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — counter.nn.ru, "Humor" directory category — web archive snapshot, March 11, 2003 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Ostrie.ru, "Frequently Asked Questions" — web archive snapshot, July 27, 2003 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — Ostrie.ru, "Jokes for your site" (block export) — web archive snapshot, February 7, 2003 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — Ostrie.ru, home page — web archive snapshot, February 3, 2005 (archive)
  8. web.archive.org — Ostrie.ru, "Diaries" section — web archive snapshot, February 7, 2005 (archive)
  9. slaed.net — SLAED CMS, "Jokes from the Ostrie.ru site" module (file catalog, 2006) (archive)
  10. web.archive.org — ostrie.moskva.com, "Ostrie" community — web archive snapshot, January 13, 2007 (archive)
  11. web.archive.org — Ostrie.ru within the "Moskva.Com" portal — web archive snapshot, February 9, 2007 (archive)
  12. web.archive.org — ostrie.ru, 301 redirect to ostrie.moskva.com — web archive snapshot, January 5, 2008 (archive)
  13. web.archive.org — ostrie.moskva.com, last snapshot of the working subportal — web archive, April 27, 2011 (archive)
  14. web.archive.org — ostrie.ru, unrelated news portal on DataLife Engine — web archive snapshot, March 30, 2013 (archive)
  15. web.archive.org — ostrie.ru, unrelated site "Year of Russia in France and Year of France in Russia" — web archive snapshot, July 6, 2015 (archive)
  16. web.archive.org — ostrie.ru, "We'll be back" placeholder — web archive snapshot, March 5, 2016 (archive)
  17. web.archive.org — "Ostriyo," revived joke site — web archive snapshot, April 7, 2016 (archive)
  18. web.archive.org — "Ostriyo," announcement recruiting authors and "raters" — web archive snapshot, April 27, 2017 (archive)
  19. web.archive.org — "Ostriyo," home page — web archive snapshot, April 25, 2020 (archive)
  20. web.archive.org — "Ostriyo," last snapshot of the working site — web archive, July 29, 2021 (archive)
  21. web.archive.org — ostrie.ru, redirect to ActiveCloud suspension page — web archive snapshot, October 6, 2021 (archive)
  22. web.archive.org — ostrie.ru, RU-CENTER page "Registration term of domain ostrie.ru has expired" — web archive snapshot, May 23, 2025 (archive)
  23. anekdot.ru — , repeated jokes for May 25, 2005 — joke marked "from www.ostrie.ru"