>However, I was told, they had decided to keep the plastic boxes, and were making use of them.
This is more of an insult than a consolation. I'm still in disbelief that they were tossed out rather than offered back or donated elsewhere.
I am no longer attending vintage computer festivals
31–40 of 76 posts
Re: I am no longer attending vintage computer festivals
#32It sounds like Jason invested a lot of time and care in making a donation of a large collection of possibly historic periodicals. He disagreed with the way the donation was handled, they apparently tossed them without much consideration and kept his plastic bins. So, he’s decided no longer to attend festivals. Was the issue about disrespect, the loss of the periodicals, mismanagement, or a combination? It doesn’t say…
I don’t get the downvotes for a recap, was something incorrect?
Re: I am no longer attending vintage computer festivals
#33I care about vintage computers and early computing history, because quite a few people I know are aware of this I am gifted old hardware and documentation. I have nowhere to set them up or display them so they go into storage. I would willingly gift them to good homes, I feel my role is as a custodian. I cannot make use of these things, but I can ensure that they continue to exist. I can completely sympathise with th…
Just a heads up - Jason Scott, the author is the "Free Range Archivist" and software curator for archive.org. (see his other site textfiles.com for another great historical archive of content - that goes way back as well)
Can you imagine having been gifted this by one of the most popular (if not THE most popular) name online for archiving things and then just. Dumping it? No shit he's offended. Shame that orgs get screwed when quality members leave. They deserve to be called out for this publicly, and hopefully they learn their
Re: I am no longer attending vintage computer festivals
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
It definitely does not sound like that. What a strange interpretation. Who would spend hundreds of dollars and hours of time just to do an unsolicited drop?
I'll take the L, without context and just reading the blog there wasn't any hint at coordination with the receiving party (besides the donation being accepted I suppose) Speaking from experience tho people clearing out storage containers sometimes do strange things
Jason is an (the?) official archivist of archive.org. He's not just some dude grabbing spare containers of junk and dumping them. He knows what he's doing. :) hopefully this puts him on your radar. He's the one who was behind the software archive of old DOS programs and getting them running in emulation in the browser. Dude is super cool (he can be a curmudgeon at times, but what he DOES is cool).
Re: I am no longer attending vintage computer festivals
#35Note that Vintage Computer Festivals refers to a specific festival held by the Vintage Computer Foundation (VCF). Jason isn't saying he will never go to any festival ever again.
Yes, in this case the capitalization is important.
It's unclear even with title case, as the words would be capitalised anyway.
Re: I am no longer attending vintage computer festivals
#36It sounds like Jason invested a lot of time and care in making a donation of a large collection of possibly historic periodicals. He disagreed with the way the donation was handled, they apparently tossed them without much consideration and kept his plastic bins. So, he’s decided no longer to attend festivals. Was the issue about disrespect, the loss of the periodicals, mismanagement, or a combination? It doesn’t say…
I don’t get the downvotes for a recap, was something incorrect?
[deleted]
Re: I am no longer attending vintage computer festivals
#37[flagged]
Re: I am no longer attending vintage computer festivals
#38A sad lesson on the ethics and goals of vintage collecting: are you responsible for stewarding everything you have, to your best ability, for the next generation? I'm sure we all think the answer is yes – but when putting that in practice, as in this case, it's easy to (self-interestedly) not think of all of the consequences. The same applies to turning old Macs into aquariums, etc.
Re: I am no longer attending vintage computer festivals
#39The politics of volunteer organizations tends to get uglier after there gets to be money in it. Preservation of things like this, ephemeral history, is important. Everybody recognizes that immediately: "hey what a good idea if someone would save that stuff". The actual doing gets harder. i got a stack of 17 years of "PC magazine" somewhere; easy to find people who say "oo cool i'd love to look through those" but much…
I'm sad there's no easily-available public resource that would at least destructively scan those for you.
Re: I am no longer attending vintage computer festivals
#40Sounds like the donation was unsolicited, Jason just expected the thousand pounds of tree pulp to be appreciated by a vintage computer festival?
From X it seems that the donation wasn't unsolicited, they were basically accepting everything they could get their hands on at the time.
However due to poor planning the donation was stored near salt water in a non climate controlled warehouse.
> https://twitter.com/amichlin/status/1778494138138124432
> "Well, it never should have been accepted in the first place. But literally everything was being accepted at the time. Finite space combined with salt water air was the culprit after the original poor planning."
It seems that the donation was split up by allowing others take what they wanted. (no reports on what happened to the rest)
> https://twitter.com/amichlin/status/1778494742742827195
> "And whoever told you they were thrown away was misinformed and not involved. There were cycles over and over again of allowing people to save anything they could carry. So it was split up, but mostly found good (not salt water rich) homes."
Note: Not taking sides - just stating what I read on Twitter/X/Whatever its called these days!