Why would he do such a thing, you ask? Well being a librarian, Gilles is very interested in being able to find information. While writing his book, the Anime Companion he often found himself unable to track down information on various anime series. Not speaking japanese, he had very few resources. His situation was ironic as there were often dozens of sites dedicated to the anime series that he was researching, but they provided only bit and peices of information. Note: that this is not to say that thre was anything lacking in the sites that he found. They had great images, games, musics downfloads, fan fiction. Everything that a fan could want BUT they did not contain what he was looking for FACTS.

Gilles decided that there needed to be a way of identifying content riche sites and of encouraging their development. So, he developed the Onsen Mark project. This project is designed to encourage the development of content rich sites by providing guidelines as to the type of content required, encouraging discussion and collaboration among fans to find missing information, and identify the sites that meet the requirements as determined by fans.