About Us – Information about Animated-Teeth.com and WMDS, Inc.

If you’re curious about specific details regarding Animated-Teeth.com, this page probably has the information you’re looking for. It covers: Our mission statement, our history, who owns Animated-Teeth.com and who writes the content found on it.

Our Mission – Explaining dentistry for dental consumers.

Our website’s goal is just that simple—Informing people about dentistry, in a way like their dentist might do during a dental appointment.

Our back story.

The early years.

Animated-Teeth.com was founded by Dr. Paul Cotner in the summer of 2000 as a hobby project. Driven by a growing interest in the early internet and a fascination with hand-coding web pages, Dr. Cotner composed and illustrated a series of posts that covered an initial set of core dental topics. They simply explained aspects of dentistry in the same way that he was doing for patients in his practice each day.

Animated-Teeth.com officially went live in September 2000. To put that era into context, our launch came just months after the peak of the dot-com bubble, and the onset of the subsequent market crash. We arrived just two years after the Google search engine first went online, and a full three years before the creation of WordPress.

Initial growth.

Animated-Teeth.com would have remained just a hobby site composed of only a few pages if it wasn’t for the introduction of Google’s AdSense product in 2003. Yes, this is the advertising that some people hate and block. And it is that horribly regulated advertising program which ruined much of the web. But for dedicated niche websites that otherwise had little hope of monetizing their pages, its introduction was a boon.

This product, available to almost any website, provided a way for small publishers to insulate themselves from the (potentially compromising) pressures typically associated with maintaining business sponsorships or participating in affiliate marketing programs. It provided an avenue by which a website could practice unfettered editorial freedom yet still cover expenses.

Moving forward.

That newfound freedom shaped the nature of Animated-Teeth.com. While always striving to remain in line with mainstream dentistry (we’d like to think that we present all topics in a similar light as currently taught in U.S. dental schools), we feel free to write about any subject that we feel might benefit website visitors, no matter how obscure the topic.

And while that path has led to the creation of a substantial number of web pages that likely won’t cover their cost of creation for years to come, if ever, every once in a while we find we’ve created a page that becomes a hit and fills a void on the web. And that’s very satisfying.

What lies in the future for Animated-Teeth.com?

To put it bluntly, it seems our time has come and gone. With Google’s continued domination of web search and their current heavy bias towards big-name websites, in conjunction with the proliferation of AI-generated content and AI-assisted research, there’s little web traffic left for the pages of small publishers like us.

It’s our opinion that with big websites you tend to get articles reviewed by but not written by dentists. So, while technically correct, they typically lack any special insight into their subjects. And with AI, what can anyone say other than it’s re-hashed content, some of it taken from us.

So, what’s in the future for Animated-Teeth.com? About all we can do is just carry on, taking satisfaction in knowing that some people continue to visit and read our pages. Thanks to those who do.

Where does the name Animated-Teeth.com come from?

The word “animated” was chosen for two reasons, one being descriptive and the other an aid in competing with other websites. If you’re interested, here’s the backstory.

“Gifs are for kids.” –
Back in the early days of the web, bandwidth (internet speed) was an issue for everyone. As a substitute for large movie files, or showing multiple static images, a more compact file type (.gif) that could also simulate animation was developed and promoted by CompuServe (an online service back in the day).
[The file extension “.gif” is phonetically pronounced “jiff,” like Jif® the peanut butter, hence the webmaster slang “.gifs are for kids.” (a play on the peanut butter’s advertising catchphrase.)]
The Yahoo Index. –
When Animated-Teeth.com first went online in September of 2000, Google.com was just turning two. And prior to the dominance of website discovery via the use of search engines, the Yahoo and DMOZ directories (alphabetical indexes of websites by category) were a big thing.

Putting the two together.

By now, you can probably see why the “animated” portion of Animated-Teeth.com was chosen.

A fair number of the illustrations on our website are animated .gifs.
And since the word “animated” starts with an “a,” when our website is listed in alphabetical listings of dental websites it’s right up front. And for a new website back in 2000, in an era when web directories were still a very big thing, that was a pretty significant factor in our growth.

Who owns Animated-Teeth.com?

The website Animated-Teeth.com is owned by WMDS, Inc., a Missouri corporation. Dr. Paul Cotner serves as president.

Postal address and telephone:

WMDS, Inc.
5126 Starboard Side Drive
Saint Louis, MO 63128
(314) 768-0156

FYI – The phone number shown is our business one and it is used for Corporate business matters only. (Primarily just with those with whom we already have an established business relationship.)

The business model of WMDS, Inc. is that of running a website and that alone. We don’t do consultations, give advice, make recommendations, make treatment referrals, provide expert witness services and we won’t consider offers from advertising agencies or networks that are initiated via telephone. There is zero chance that any of these types of inquiries or solicitations will receive a return call from us.

How can parties get in touch with WMDS, Inc. / Animated-Teeth.com?

There are a couple of ways. They include email, our site-wide feedback feature or posting comments on our pages that accept them. These contact methods are outlined here.

What does “WMDS” stand for?

WMDS, Inc. was initially set up by Dr. Cotner as a “hobby” corporation involving other projects for which the letters did hold some meaning.

Later on, as Animated-Teeth.com became the primary focus of the Corporation, as a matter of convenience the use of the lettered name was kept even though nothing about it still holds any significance.

Who is the author of the content on Animated-Teeth.com?

Legally, the “author” of the content found on Animated-Teeth.com, and the holder of its applicable copyrights, is WMDS, Inc. That’s because it was created by employees of the Corporation as “works for hire” (a legal term defined by the US Copyright Office).

So, if you’re looking for details about how to make a citation for content you’ve found on our website, you should use our corporate name as the author. (Here are instructions for how to format citations.)

Who actually composes the content for Animated-Teeth.com’s pages?

Pretty much everything currently found on Animated-Teeth.com, at least in regard to dental content, has been written by Dr. Cotner, the founder of the website, in the role of an employee of the Corporation. He also serves as the Editor of Animated-Teeth.com. In some portions of our website (like replies to comments), we show Dr. Cotner’s screen name “Staff Dentist” to signify his role in the content’s creation.

Here’s the profile page for: Dr. Cotner | “Staff Dentist”

Why is the term “Editorial Contributors” shown as the author on pages rather than an individual’s name?

While right now the creation of content on Animated-Teeth.com is primarily just a one-person shop, in the past we’ve utilized additional content writers. (Over the years we’ve declined offers from many more.)

Our experience.

It seems to us that the primary motivation of individuals wanting to work with our website is that of “personal branding.” The usual goal seems to be that of increasing the visibility of their name on the internet, and gaining links from our site to their personal ones. And while we get that this kind of self-promotion is a generally accepted use of the web, here at Animated-Teeth.com we consider the focus of our website more about the topic of dentistry, and less so individuals.

The dilemma.

When relationships change, there’s always the question of what ethically should be done with the contributor’s content (as opposed to what legally the Corporation has a right to do with it). Historically, we’ve just removed it from our website and replaced it with new content. And due to this policy, we haven’t really experienced an economy of scale in regard to content creation when bringing on additional contributors, which would be the reason to do so in the first place.

In the future, if we decide to engage with any additional content creators, we’ll include them on this page as an “editorial contributor” and identify them personally on their own profile page. Doing so will allow for the attribution of their work, which is important, yet allow the focus of our website to remain on just dentistry and not personalities.

How to make a citation for information found on Animated-Teeth.com.

The content found on the pages of Animated-Teeth.com (both textual and visual) have been created by employees of WMDS, Inc. (the owner of the website) and therefore are considered to be “works made for hire.”

The statute governing this aspect of copyright law dictates that in the case of works made for hire, it’s the employer for whom the work has been prepared (WMDS, Inc. in this case) who is considered to be the author.

When citing a reference to content found on Animated-Teeth.com we would suggest the following form:

Basic Form

WMDS, Inc. (Date). Page name. Retrieved [date] from [URL]

The above date can be difficult to find for pages of some topics. On some pages, the last-revision date is found following the page’s content (final paragraph). If no date is given, the page’s reference-sources link/page (found at the end of the page’s content) will show the last date the page’s topic was revised or updated.

Example

WMDS, Inc. (2018, July). What is tooth decay? Retrieved July 10, 2018, from
https://www.animated-teeth.com/tooth_decay/t1_tooth_decay_cavities.htm