Archiving the Future
What happens to all the information and sites that we link to from our own sites? I was thinking about the plethora of information on the web today and the beauty of links and how wonderful everything seems. But then I wondered what the web is going to be like 20 years from now and will all the resources we use now be around still? Linkrot now is one thing, but what about 5 years down the road? Websites come and websites go, but how many will stand the test of time?
If I continue with this site for a couple of years and end up with thousands of sites linking back to me, is it my obligation to keep the site up for as long as possible? When you really start to think about it, pressure starts to mount. Maybe there is some responsibilty for you to keep the site up, but should you? I can read the words of a book printed in 1604, but will people be able to read the words of this entry in 2404? A lot of questions I have, yet no answers.
Who am I kidding? My words mean jack.
Related reading:
Very interesting question and topic, Scrivs!
I have myself been thinking about this for a long time, whether it is my responsibility to keep my weblog in future or what happens to lot of links I use (some of them do rot, unfortunately)…
I think it is reponsible to keep content at your website for future reference even if you stop blogging.
On the other hand, we would have not have to brainstorm about this, if there had been Xanadu instead of standard www hypertext (see: http://xanadu.com/).
By dusoft on October 6, 2005 9:41 am
It sounds so sad when you put it that way…
Reminding us that our work nowadays is not everlasting, or not even long-lasting. Maybe we need a place where old articles can go to when it’s time for them to see the clearing at the end of the path?
By Robert Nyman on October 6, 2005 9:44 am
I can read the words of a book printed in 1604, but will people be able to read the words of this entry in 2404?
Generaly, yes, you can:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://9rules.com/whitespace/
Thank god for archive.org.
By Stefan Seiz on October 6, 2005 9:59 am
That’s why the waybackmachine, and similar caching systems are important.. and why the tyranny of copyright law should be rebuffed to allow them to exist. They are the new library.
By JohnO on October 6, 2005 10:06 am
I suppose that is why initiatives like archive.org are so important. Content that is worthy of keeping for 5 to 10 years means that it must hold some type of value, and will probably be kept around purely for that reason.
I wouldn’t worry if your Weblog went down 5 years from now, because only a very very few people will actually be looking for the content held within.
What really scares me are the “middle-man” services that are popping up everywhere. Like FeedBurner and TinyURL type services.
Feedburner doesn’t try to be a middle man, but because they remove the permalink from the feed, some people end up linking from their Weblog to Feedburner which forwards to the site. This is a very very bad thing when we’re talking about Linkrot.
Services like TinyURL (and the new one that is out that I can’t remember the name of) are good for sending your friends emails that you don’t want them to have to copy/paste an enormous link into their browser - but again, if those services go down - hundreds of thousands of permalinks are broken.
Link to the source people, link to the source.
By Colin D. Devroe on October 6, 2005 10:09 am
There are ways to deal with this issue — in theory. For example, there are strategies for creating URIs for longevity as well as ways to notify visitors that the content they’re seeking has intentionally been removed.
But of course, reality dictates that companies will go out of business, organizations will disband, and people will just stop maintaining content. So for that, you’ve got archival services.
By Ara Pehlivanian on October 6, 2005 10:16 am
I am hoping that more hosting companies will start to offer lifetime packages, so at the very least we can do nothing and our sites will stay up until the hosting company goes away. Maybe ourmedia.org can play a role here?
By John Zeratsky on October 6, 2005 10:32 am
Websites come and go faster than rap groups. In the end, everyone will fall the fuck off.
By Chopper on October 6, 2005 11:16 am
Those are some pretty good questions.
The nice thing is that hard drive space is ultra cheap, hosting fees are becoming affordable for most everyone (especially for those $3/mo. hosting deals), and places like Google are motivated to categorize and archive the world’s information.
Just shooting from the hip here, but maybe domain registration (or better yet, renewal) becomes free. After you purchase a name, you really do own it as long as you want to. Also, maybe Google’s “cached” pages expand to be true archives for any link that has ever presented itself (much like that site that archives sites at given times and allows you to look back on snapshots in time - its name currently eludes me). If Google indexes you, you’re there for life. Then maybe they become the default answer to “Page not Found” - if there’s a 404, you automatically get the option to click on Google’s archived version thereof. Who knows, I’m just blabbing now.
All conjecture, but fun stuff to think about.
By Nathan Logan on October 6, 2005 11:33 am
Truthfully, someone can probably do the whole web archiving thing better. Neither Google nor Yahoo nor Archive’s caches are sufficient.
By Aaron Lebo on October 6, 2005 1:47 pm
Nathan posted a thing I thought about myself — domains. When you make a book, it’s mostly a one-time expense — when it has been printed, it’s somewhat safe.
Web content is a bit different. When you’ve published something, you have the possibility to go and change the content. And the content can then become impossible to reach due to lack of domain renewals. And that brings back the question — are you required to pay for something that you don’t show interest for, anymore?
I just don’t think that you can compare books and the Web. The Web is organic, and that causes something to perish.
By Jonathan Holst on October 6, 2005 1:57 pm
I have been thinking about this a lot lately too, where *will* our sites be in 10 or 20 years? Even more troubling is where or who will know all our passwords when we’re passed on? This is a unique situation that has not really existed until that advent of the Internet. Lots and lots of logins and passwords for somebody to pass on to another person.
It’s hard to recover a password when you don’t have a login/password to check the email account where the password is sent/reset.
By Justin Perkins on October 6, 2005 3:22 pm
#12: POP3 (downloading emails to your computer) could help since when the owner passes away, his family still could check his emails. But of course since the advent of Gmail and such online services, this is very difficult issue to resolve, you are right about that.
By dusoft on October 7, 2005 1:55 pm
We need a new HTTP response code - 210 Gone Soon. It is similar to 410, except it still serves the resource.
That way, your link checker that you run over your websites will notify you that a resource is going to be moved, and you have the opportunity to mirror it.
Your responsibility then would be to start serving 210 responses for a month or two, then anybody who cares will have a local copy to point to.
By Jim Dabell on October 14, 2005 6:16 am
s/moved/removed/.
By Jim Dabell on October 14, 2005 6:17 am
Yea you guys are really cool and all but yea i think in the furture no one will ever like each othe rand everyone will fight everyday of the freakin year!!!!!!
By Chase on December 2, 2005 3:22 pm