3 ms·

I wonder if Wikimedia can do something to help the internet archive. They are sitting on huge amounts of money and their goals are somewhat similar.

baby 10y ago
I don't fully agree with this. I like that Archive.org exists, but I don't really mind if most of the archive would come to disappear. There is a lot of garbage being generated on the web and I really don't think there is sense in saving it. On the other side, Wikipedia is knowledge, pure knowledge, and this is worth preserving in my opinion.
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  I agree about the tide of garbage, but on the other hand garbage is intensely interesting to historians. Think what one could do with a decent sentiment analysis AI and billions of comments on news stories for example. By themselves many of them are just nonsensical ranting for one or other political viewpoint, but in the aggregate you could probably identify significant historical tipping points that inflected much earlier than 'official' indicators.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    This comment from a long-ago article [1] about saving many Usenet postings that would otherwise have been lost applies: That’s why not only the very earliest Usenet posts, before Spencer started archiving in 1981 (Usenet began in 1979) but even some of the posts in the 1980s are still lost. It’s too bad; today, wouldn’t more of us rather see what was being said about abortion in 1984 than sift through the arcana of bug fixes in systems that have probably been long since retired? “It was perfectly reasonable from the viewpoint of stuff that we might want to use again, but a little sad from today’s viewpoint,” Spencer admits. [1] http://www.salon.com/2002/01/08/saving_usenet/ http://www.salon.com/2002/01/08/saving_usenet/ A great read BTW.
- mgr86 10y ago
  It sounds like you have only ever used the WayBackMachine. Their audio collection is phenomenal. But that just scratches the surface. Tv News archive, Texts, games, and so much more.
  - baby 10y ago
    Ah I didn't think of those. Good point.
cooper12 10y ago
Just to dispel a oft-repeated notion, the Wikimedia Foundation is not really sitting on that much money. From the horse's mouth: > Our reserves vary throughout the year but are generally around 1 year of revenue. The typical recommendation for stable and successful nonprofits is to have between 6 months and 2 years of reserves. (https://www.quora.com/Wikipedia-in-2015-Why-does-Wikipedia-ask-for-donations-even-though-it-has-a-huge-reserve-60M-of-value-cash-investments-etc https://www.quora.com/Wikipedia-in-2015-Why-does-Wikipedia-a...) It's only responsible for a non-profit to keep money for when people donate less or when a lot of money is needed. In fact it would be unwise to only ask for donations when you're on the verge of bankruptcy. Not to mention that no matter how efficiently you run an organization, at the size of readers served by Wikipedia you do need to meet the demand by spending more resources. I have to mention this because so many people use it as justification not to donate, "oh I don't want to fund fat cat Jimbo's private jet" or whatever, especially when the foundations is very transparent compared to other non-profits. That being said I do agree with the sentiment since Wikipedia uses the Internet Archive heavily to access citations that have long since 404ed and they both believe in access to information. Personally as a Wikipedia editor, I use the Internet Archive daily to access websites that are no longer online and to fight linkrot. It's invaluable for the functioning of the encyclopedia, especially when reacting to dead links as opposed to pre-emptively saving sources in Webcite or Archive.is. Wikimedia does appear on the donors acknowledgement page by the way (http://archive.org/donate/donors.php http://archive.org/donate/donors.php), though I'm sure you meant in a more hands-on manner.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  They spend a lot of money on sub-projects that hardly go anywhere. They could cancel a bunch of those to put that money and effort into Archive instead. Maybe even a neutral, high-impact version of what Yahoo Directories used to do. Focus on all the stuff people might need or want to know curated into a collection with the Archive references on top of the Archive sponsorship.
  - greglindahl 10y ago
    That would be quite a circle, given that Wikipedia was inspired by GNUhoo / NewHoo / ODP, which was the first crowd-sourced Internet thing. The Internet Archive uses blekko's slashtag data, which is a commercial effort founded by the ODP team -- blekko, now owned by IBM Watson.

baby 10y ago

I don't fully agree with this. I like that Archive.org exists, but I don't really mind if most of the archive would come to disappear. There is a lot of garbage being generated on the web and I really don't think there is sense in saving it. On the other side, Wikipedia is knowledge, pure knowledge, and this is worth preserving in my opinion.

anigbrowl 10y ago
I agree about the tide of garbage, but on the other hand garbage is intensely interesting to historians. Think what one could do with a decent sentiment analysis AI and billions of comments on news stories for example. By themselves many of them are just nonsensical ranting for one or other political viewpoint, but in the aggregate you could probably identify significant historical tipping points that inflected much earlier than 'official' indicators.
- ghaff 10y ago
  This comment from a long-ago article [1] about saving many Usenet postings that would otherwise have been lost applies: That’s why not only the very earliest Usenet posts, before Spencer started archiving in 1981 (Usenet began in 1979) but even some of the posts in the 1980s are still lost. It’s too bad; today, wouldn’t more of us rather see what was being said about abortion in 1984 than sift through the arcana of bug fixes in systems that have probably been long since retired? “It was perfectly reasonable from the viewpoint of stuff that we might want to use again, but a little sad from today’s viewpoint,” Spencer admits. [1] http://www.salon.com/2002/01/08/saving_usenet/ http://www.salon.com/2002/01/08/saving_usenet/ A great read BTW.
mgr86 10y ago
It sounds like you have only ever used the WayBackMachine. Their audio collection is phenomenal. But that just scratches the surface. Tv News archive, Texts, games, and so much more.
- baby 10y ago
  Ah I didn't think of those. Good point.

cooper12 10y ago

Just to dispel a oft-repeated notion, the Wikimedia Foundation is not really sitting on that much money. From the horse's mouth: > Our reserves vary throughout the year but are generally around 1 year of revenue. The typical recommendation for stable and successful nonprofits is to have between 6 months and 2 years of reserves. (https://www.quora.com/Wikipedia-in-2015-Why-does-Wikipedia-ask-for-donations-even-though-it-has-a-huge-reserve-60M-of-value-cash-investments-etc https://www.quora.com/Wikipedia-in-2015-Why-does-Wikipedia-a...) It's only responsible for a non-profit to keep money for when people donate less or when a lot of money is needed. In fact it would be unwise to only ask for donations when you're on the verge of bankruptcy. Not to mention that no matter how efficiently you run an organization, at the size of readers served by Wikipedia you do need to meet the demand by spending more resources. I have to mention this because so many people use it as justification not to donate, "oh I don't want to fund fat cat Jimbo's private jet" or whatever, especially when the foundations is very transparent compared to other non-profits. That being said I do agree with the sentiment since Wikipedia uses the Internet Archive heavily to access citations that have long since 404ed and they both believe in access to information. Personally as a Wikipedia editor, I use the Internet Archive daily to access websites that are no longer online and to fight linkrot. It's invaluable for the functioning of the encyclopedia, especially when reacting to dead links as opposed to pre-emptively saving sources in Webcite or Archive.is. Wikimedia does appear on the donors acknowledgement page by the way (http://archive.org/donate/donors.php http://archive.org/donate/donors.php), though I'm sure you meant in a more hands-on manner.

nickpsecurity 10y ago
They spend a lot of money on sub-projects that hardly go anywhere. They could cancel a bunch of those to put that money and effort into Archive instead. Maybe even a neutral, high-impact version of what Yahoo Directories used to do. Focus on all the stuff people might need or want to know curated into a collection with the Archive references on top of the Archive sponsorship.
- greglindahl 10y ago
  That would be quite a circle, given that Wikipedia was inspired by GNUhoo / NewHoo / ODP, which was the first crowd-sourced Internet thing. The Internet Archive uses blekko's slashtag data, which is a commercial effort founded by the ODP team -- blekko, now owned by IBM Watson.