There’s a simple alternative to the current web
1–10 of 148 posts
Re: There’s a simple alternative to the current web
#2Y U no archive.org?
Re: There’s a simple alternative to the current web
#3"The Tyranny of Print" has a nice ring to it, but mediums that give the creator more control over appearance+behavior are going to lend themselves to crafting more compelling experiences.
Sure, not disappearing in 10 years (or whenever the original server goes poof) would also be nice, but it's of little benefit if no one ever sees the thing in the first place.
And disappearing is the default, natural state of things.
If I see some people playing music on a corner and return the next night to see they've left, I may be wistful, but it would be silly to argue "playing live music is broken and we should fix it".
If you think of web sites as performances put on for a limited time by the server, it doesn't seem so terrible that they disappear after a while.
Re: There’s a simple alternative to the current web
#4This wouldn't work for any web page that has dynamic content stored in a database. If the database no longer exists a decade from now this doesn't solve that problem.
Also, wouldn't this break analytics and reporting for most websites too? It'll be much tougher to track user behavior to improve user experience. And debugging using log data? I get what the author is suggesting but "fixing the web" this way would break more things that large websites and companies rely on.
Re: There’s a simple alternative to the current web
#5This wouldn't work for any web page that has dynamic content stored in a database. If the database no longer exists a decade from now this doesn't solve that problem. Also, wouldn't this break analytics and reporting for most websites too? It'll be much tougher to track user behavior to improve user experience. And debugging using log data? I get what the author is suggesting but "fixing the web" this way would break…
> It'll be much tougher to track user behavior to improve user experience.
That sounds tragically Orwellian. "We do [BAD THING] to help you! [and it also, just by chance, makes us more money too by exploiting you, but never you mind that]"
> break more things that large websites and companies rely on.
The historical "spy everywhere" privacy model of the web isn't a natural state anybody has a right to exploit. Breaking the current centralized curation model would be a benefit for everyone.
Re: There’s a simple alternative to the current web
#6Clearly I'm a biased observer, but I really think people should take steps to archive stuff that is important to them. Of course it's terrible when large sites go offline and take vast swaths of the Internet with them, and we should continue to shame the ones that do it. At the same time, if something is really important to you, you shouldn't store it in the form of links to random third-party servers.
One problem we need to solve as coders is giving people better tools for saving stuff. It's really hard right now to save a webpage (or worse, series of connected pages) with any confidence that you've captured everything you need to see it again if the original server disappears.
A project that I think has struck a really good balance between permanence and retaining authors' control over their writing is the Archive of Our Own (AO3). A bunch of fanfic authors got tired of sites falling out from under them, and decided to implement their own system, along with sensible governance and a way to fund its ongoing operations. The only broken links I've ever seen to AO3 are ones where the author consciously decided to take the material offline.
Re: There’s a simple alternative to the current web
#7This wouldn't work for any web page that has dynamic content stored in a database. If the database no longer exists a decade from now this doesn't solve that problem. Also, wouldn't this break analytics and reporting for most websites too? It'll be much tougher to track user behavior to improve user experience. And debugging using log data? I get what the author is suggesting but "fixing the web" this way would break…
Well, as the Internet once said to the music companies, it's not our fault if our new technology breaks your business model. People would find new ways to solve these problems.
Re: There’s a simple alternative to the current web
#8"The Tyranny of Print" has a nice ring to it, but mediums that give the creator more control over appearance+behavior are going to lend themselves to crafting more compelling experiences. Sure, not disappearing in 10 years (or whenever the original server goes poof) would also be nice, but it's of little benefit if no one ever sees the thing in the first place. And disappearing is the default, natural state of things…
The mental model of web browsing and bookmarking is: "If I see it, I can get to it again." There's a partial feeling of ownership. "I've read it, so I should be able to refer back to it later."
Nobody (at least, no sane regular person) reads a webpage and thinks "I have a time-limited license from the originator of this content to consume the material and only use it for their expressly condoned purposes."
The vanishing content problem is like if books in your house randomly walked away just because it's the "natural state" of things to disappear.
Re: There’s a simple alternative to the current web
#9We changed the title to the first sentence of the article because it is less linkbaity.
Re: There’s a simple alternative to the current web
#10Y U no archive.org?
Archive.org doesn't have everything and their archives can be cleared of specific content on request of the copyright holder.
There is a big copyright issue here as in the UK we don't have the relatively liberal Fair Use exceptions that are in the USC - we only just got permission to format shift and make personal-use backups (so MP3 players [using tracks ripped from CD] are legal as of June this year!). Copying down a website, beyond caching, is generally speaking copyright infringement for those in the UK.