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Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

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Re: Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

#51

Post by Gormo »

shevy-java wrote: post #5

Webpages dying is probably one of the biggest design flaws of the original web. I am not saying old content needs to be preserved forever, but so much content has factually been lost over time. Old logs from text-based MUDs for instance, even for MUDs that still exist today.

> Webpages dying is probably one of the biggest design flaws of the original web.

I'd say it's one of the biggest design flaws of the current web, what with more and more content hidden behind paywalls, increasingly restricted WAFs, and rendered client-side via convoluted JavaScript.

Archiving and mirroring of old-style websites, delivered as static HTML, is simple and straightforward. 20 years from now, most web content from ~1996 to ~2015 will still be accessible, but much of today's web content probably won't.

Re: Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

#52

Post by Gormo »

ChadNauseam wrote: post #8
shevy-java wrote: post #5

Webpages dying is probably one of the biggest design flaws of the original web. I am not saying old content needs to be preserved forever, but so much content has factually been lost over time. Old logs from text-based MUDs for instance, even for MUDs that still exist today.

The technology is still in its infancy unfortunately, so there's no way the web could have been based on it, but I think content-addressing is the long-term play. If I click a link, there are some cases where I want the server to respond with a fresh response just for me (e.g. a website showing the weather). But often I just want whatever content was linked to (e.g. a webpage explaining a math content). In the latter…

That's pretty much how IPFS works.

Re: Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

#53

Post by ButlerianJihad »

efskap wrote: post #6
shevy-java wrote: post #5

Webpages dying is probably one of the biggest design flaws of the original web. I am not saying old content needs to be preserved forever, but so much content has factually been lost over time. Old logs from text-based MUDs for instance, even for MUDs that still exist today.

It's the great irony of digital media. Copying data is accurate to the bit and is preserved "as-is", but in practice, it requires someone to maintain servers, to care about it. To separate out what is worth preserving. We hot-linked to all those image hosts because we couldn't imagine them disappearing. Archive.org had incredible foresight and if it didn't already exist, I'd call such a project a pipe dream.

Digital Data https://m.xkcd.com/1683/

There are many TinyMUD logs that were posted on Usenet, still to be found on Google Groups.

However, logging was controversial amongst mudders. It was almost always rude to log a private conversation without knowledge or consent; it was tacky to indiscriminately log while everyone was in the "hangout room" or Rec Room, as it were, and it was also bad form to post logs to Usenet or share them without redacting player names and other things.

But logging was built-in to most clients, and it was possible for server administrators to log (and hypothetically any malware-in-the-middle could log the cleartext, unencrypted TinyMUD TCP streams.) And many nefarious deeds by nasty players were exposed to the light when their logs were posted.

Re: Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

#54

Post by darknavi »

drooopy wrote: post #46
bradley13 wrote: post #34

2009-2014? That's not the old web. Or I'm old. Take your pick.

Right? When I think of the old web I think of my Xena and X-Files fan sites on Geocities circa 1997

I was a few years late to the start (early 90s kid) but I am nostalgic for the vast amount of myfreewebs + dot.tk websites out there.

Hit counters on the front page was mandatory of course.

Re: Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

#55

Post by tekne »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #39
efskap wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the great irony of digital media. Copying data is accurate to the bit and is preserved "as-is", but in practice, it requires someone to maintain servers, to care about it. To separate out what is worth preserving. We hot-linked to all those image hosts because we couldn't imagine them disappearing. Archive.org had incredible foresight and if it didn't already exist, I'd call such a project a pipe dream.

> It's the great irony of digital media. Copying data is accurate to the bit and is preserved "as-is", but in practice, it requires someone to maintain servers, to care about it. To separate out what is worth preserving. This is a bit idealized. In practice copying data is not quite accurate (especially in bulk) and bit-rot is a very real phenomenon, both in flight and in storage. You sometimes encounter it when deal…

Content-addressed storage and error correcting codes mean that one can make bitrot astronomically unlikely with honestly minimal infra investment.

It's copyright that causes anything to disappear from the web IMO -- torrents never die.

EDIT: I am aware that unseeded torrents do in fact die. But it really doesn't take much to seed a whole hard drive's worth of rarely requested data -- this also detects bitrot and so corrects errors automatically if you're not the only copy.

If you are, there's ECC, as well as making another copy.

Re: Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

#56

Post by dd8601fn »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #49
bradley13 wrote: post #34

2009-2014? That's not the old web. Or I'm old. Take your pick.

+1 for this I'd consider the facebook and mega era to be relatively new, the "old web" for me would be the one without centralization around a few giants, the era of random phpbb forums, private websites with "this site is under construction" banners and internet directories to find stuff.

God… I stood up so, so many phpBB instances.

Re: Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

#59

Post by ButlerianJihad »

jperras wrote: post #57

I would posit that "old web" could be defined as the period before Google Search became public ( But maybe that's more a measure of my own age and perceptions rather than an accurate representation of the various eras of the internet/web...

Web Design Museum: Search Engines https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/exhibitions/search-engines-i...

Re: Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

#60

Post by marginalia_nu »

tekne wrote: post #55
marginalia_nu wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the great irony of digital media. Copying data is accurate to the bit and is preserved "as-is", but in practice, it requires someone to maintain servers, to care about it. To separate out what is worth preserving. This is a bit idealized. In practice copying data is not quite accurate (especially in bulk) and bit-rot is a very real phenomenon, both in flight and in storage. You sometimes encounter it when deal…

Content-addressed storage and error correcting codes mean that one can make bitrot astronomically unlikely with honestly minimal infra investment. It's copyright that causes anything to disappear from the web IMO -- torrents never die. EDIT: I am aware that unseeded torrents do in fact die. But it really doesn't take much to seed a whole hard drive's worth of rarely requested data -- this also detects bitrot and so c…

There are mitigations in both software and hardware, but most consumer machines, by default, do almost none of that. No ECC RAM, no error correction in the filesystem.
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