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Link rot and content drift are endemic to the web

theatlantic.com

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Re: Link rot and content drift are endemic to the web

#141

Post by abeppu »

I feel like it's been quite a while since I saw anyone talking about IPFS, but I used to hear about it not infrequently. I don't know if this is because it was too nerdy, or too misaligned with the incentives of most organizations (it's scary for some to not be able to unpublish), or because it comes with some privacy sacrifices, or perhaps it just matters less when hardly any page is actually static any longer.

But, for guarding against "published", supposedly static material disappearing, or changing silently, and for removing a short list of organizations from being responsible for preserving content, IPFS or something like it seems well-suited. Anyone who cares to preserve something can. Any change is noticeable.

Re: Link rot and content drift are endemic to the web

#142

Post by samatman »

This is why I think Twitter made a mistake in using the normal suspension mechanism to ban @realDonaldTrump.

Not passing judgement on the decision to take away his posting privileges. But by suspending POTUS, everything he posted during his term in office is just... gone. Every hot link to anything he said, on any website, is broken.

This is an enormous loss to any historian of the era. He was using Twitter as his main microphone to speak to the world, and all that content is, while not lost lost, thoroughly and permanently scrambled.

It would have been better to just lock him out of the account, publish a statement that the @realDonaldTrump account is now permanently archived, and that any new account he tried to open will be suspended.

Re: Link rot and content drift are endemic to the web

#143

Post by jandrese »

throwawayboise wrote: post #85
tda wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the bright side, using a tool like Internet archive it should be easy to filter out which articles were removed and/or edited by the BBC, in a way highlighting the most historically important articles.

I mean yes, if you are extremely motivated. But the wayback machine is pretty klunky and slow, honestly. And there's no good "diff" view that summarizes the changes to a URL over time AFAIK.

This is true, but they're also taking on an absolutely monumental task on a shoestring budget. I continue to be amazed at what they are able to accomplish. There aren't many heroes on the internet, but the Internet Archive team qualifies.

Re: Link rot and content drift are endemic to the web

#144

Post by Forbo »

krapp wrote: post #131
majormajor wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many how to videos, memes, concerts, etc, are really that important? In fifty years how many people will care? How many people should care because it would mean ignoring the huge volume of newer stuff? A hundred years? Two hundred? I haven't even read or seen many of the existing cultural artifacts we have from past decades and centuries, what would I do if orders of magnitudes more of them had been preserved? In…

>I haven't even read or seen many of the existing cultural artifacts we have from past decades and centuries, what would I do if orders of magnitudes more of them had been preserved? You might have a better understanding of the culture that produced them. You might appreciate a work of art that would otherwise not exist. We have graffiti from Pompeii, we know Ea-nasir sold cheap copper in ancient Ur 3700-odd years ag…

Minor nitpick, it was ~1750 BC, so that would be around 3700 years ago.

Re: Link rot and content drift are endemic to the web

#145

Post by jandrese »

CodeGlitch wrote: post #94
mountainb wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The BBC publishes nothing but garbage and there are other extant sources that are more durable. It's fine to forget things. We're missing entire libraries of classical literature from great authors which would be nice to have. Missing documentary sewage isn't a tragedy. This should show us that most of the web isn't worth preserving anyway, much like McDonald's burger wrappers aren't worth preserving like sacred arti…

Reading one of the BBC's technical articles, a cyber security news item, they had 3 errors in the first paragraph. I didn't bother reading to the end of the article. I'm glad I no longer pay for a TV license.

It has always been a constant of journalism that you read an article in your field and go "Wow, this is terrible, they got all of the details wrong". But then you turn around and trust the reporting on everything outside of your field of expertise.

Re: Link rot and content drift are endemic to the web

#146

Post by wintermutestwin »

ChrisArchitect wrote: post #118
wintermutestwin wrote: post #47

I am increasingly worried about the valuable content on YouTube. There are so many old live concerts, useful how-to videos and other cultural treasures amidst all the junk. I suspect that one day, they will make their ads unblockable by embedding them in the video files. I sure hope that some people are downloading the valuable stuff and stashing it away to load onto YouTube's successor.

you're worried about....the ads? Having ads around doesn't make the content any less valuable. We're talking about the content itself still being available, who cares if there's some ads keeping the system up if all those live concerts and how-to vids are preserved forever

Who is going to watch live concert footage with ads jammed into it? For those of us who grew up in the age of TV, advertising was clearly a slippery slope where they constantly increased the ad content until it was beyond unbearable (they even deleted parts of shows to make room for more ads!) YouTube will likely do the same when they decide to force all of us to watch unblockable and unskipable ads to access content that they didn't even create or curate. All they have done is provide a network effect monopoly that hoovered up the majority of content.

Re: Link rot and content drift are endemic to the web

#147

Post by Smithalicious »

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #136
lez wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this as a more general pattern on HN: Opinions not-yet-adopted by academia are often downvoted instead of being argued with. This stifles innovation because alternative opinions do not even show up in the casual reader's screen.

Absent an explanation of why I've annoyed people, I get as much of a dopamine hit from downvotes as upvotes. I'd rather be polarising than forgettable. Whenever I take an unpopular stance I remind myself of Rick Sanchez's wise words, "Your boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes you cheer".

Me too, I think a lot of my most upvoted comments are just truisms and preaching to the choir, whereas a lot of the more insightful things I've said quickly get greyed out.

Re: Link rot and content drift are endemic to the web

#148

Post by krapp »

Forbo wrote: post #144
krapp wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I haven't even read or seen many of the existing cultural artifacts we have from past decades and centuries, what would I do if orders of magnitudes more of them had been preserved? You might have a better understanding of the culture that produced them. You might appreciate a work of art that would otherwise not exist. We have graffiti from Pompeii, we know Ea-nasir sold cheap copper in ancient Ur 3700-odd years ag…

Minor nitpick, it was ~1750 BC, so that would be around 3700 years ago.

Oops, fair enough.

Re: Link rot and content drift are endemic to the web

#150

Post by a1369209993 »

thrashh wrote: post #139
deadalus wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wayback Machine censors many websites(like 4chan) from being 'saved'. Wayback Machine also removes previously archived videos/websites in certain cases. They are not neutral.

Don’t spread misinformation. The Wayback Machine is not censoring 4chan. 4chan is ‘censoring’ the Wayback Machine. https://www.4chan.org/robots.txt Also, I let a domain of mine expire and the new domain owner (which just plastered ads) had a robots.txt that retroactively removed my “previously archived website” from the Wayback Machine.

> Don't spread misinformation.

No you.

> The Wayback Machine is not censoring 4chan. 4chan is 'censoring' the Wayback Machine.

4chan is not the operator of the server at web.archive.org. Compliance with robots.txt restrictions is 100% the Internet Archive's fault.

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