4 ms·

I think this is an interesting point - I will say that the vast vast majority of these sites (unfortunately I can't disclose the number) have not received edits

I think this is an interesting point - I will say that the vast vast majority of these sites (unfortunately I can't disclose the number) have not received edits or even visits for more than two years. To me, archiving those sites doesn't feel like destruction, it feels like backing up unused content and protecting it for the user. From our research, a lot of users don't realize that these sites are still published, and in some cases don't want this content out there in the world. I think it's relevant that people should have control over their own information and what is live on the web. That being said, I hear the feedback, and I'll talk to the team about what we might be able to do, within legal and privacy constraints, to protect published sites.

cyphar 6y ago
Sadly, this mentality reminds me a lot of the great GeoCities purge of 2009. Have you considered partnering with the Internet Archive to back up any publicly-accessible classic sites which you plan to purge? Whether or not a site has had visitors recently isn't a fair measure of the importance of those sites -- for instance, there were examples of digital shrines in GeoCities and Yahoo still decided to eradicate them all. It was only thanks to projects like the Internet Archive that we haven't lost that period of internet history just to free up some disk platter space. EDIT: I also am struggling to understand what this means: > To me, archiving those sites doesn't feel like destruction, it feels like backing up unused content and protecting it for the user. What does "archiving" mean here? Will the sites still be accessible or not? Is "archive" here a euphemism for "delete" -- in which case, how is it not like destruction and how is it like a "backup"? I'm not sure most people would consider "rm -rf" to be a backup strategy, but it definitely does have very good storage density.
- csours 6y ago
  There's a big disconnect between technological work and emotional work. If I make myself a digital scrapbook online, it may not have many visitors (or any) just like a scrapbook may sit on a shelf for years without being touched; but the emotional impact when you do pick it up again is huge. Kind of like comparing a scrapbook to a best seller novel.
- mattzito 6y ago
  "Archiving" means that each site will be converted into an HTML export and placed in their Google Drive, and a separate copy will be converted to a new site and placed in a draft (unpublished) state in their Google Drive. They can choose to republish that new Site, or take the HTML export and move it to a new platform of their choosing.
  - prepend 6y ago
    And thus taking it offline. My concern isn’t that the files don’t exist any more,I think it’s nice to zip it and add it to the owners gdrive, my concern is that the files are no longer accessible on the web. So all the links are broken, no longer in search, etc. This seems like a much larger issue than archiving and it would be cool to hear how you all decided to take the sites offline. Is it a cost issue? I imagine hosting a billion static sites shouldn’t cost much.
teach 6y ago
My anecdata agrees; I received the email and _vaguely_ remember maybe having done this at some point. Certainly it's nothing I want to keep, whatever it is. Yet when I visited the Classic Sites Manager it shows nothing. ("0 owned by you" and 0s all the way down the rest of the suggested filters.) False positive, maybe? The email sounded like y'all were pretty certain: "We’ve identified that you own one or more ACTIVE classic Sites."
- mattzito 6y ago
  Possibly? It's possible that the emails were sent on a data pull at some point, and in between data pull and emailing, you deleted the classic site. Or potentially there was a wire crossed somewhere. I apologize for the extra email either way - if the Classic Sites Manager shows no sites, you are good to go.
dwheeler 6y ago
> I will say that the vast vast majority of these sites (unfortunately I can't disclose the number) have not received edits or even visits for more than two years I'm having a hard time understanding why that would justify deleting that information forever. If anything, that suggests that providing static access would be enough and nearly zero-cost. Storage costs are a fraction of what they were. I do a lot of searching for computer-related historical information, e.g., looking for rationales of "why something happened". Once information is destroyed it's often impossible to recover. No one might look at it for 30 years, and then there's only one retrieval but it was an important retrieval. We've had a tremendous loss of recent information. This isn't the only example, but it's an important one. I'd like to see information retained, not lost.
bachmeier 6y ago
> From our research, a lot of users don't realize that these sites are still published, and in some cases don't want this content out there in the world. I had forgotten about my Google site until seeing this posted. The last update of any kind was early 2013; most content was from 2011 or earlier. Some of the information on the site is wrong, a lot irrelevant, and worst of all, someone might not find my real site because of that one. I'd much prefer a dead site stop working to leaving it out there.
- freehunter 6y ago
  Now imagine your the opposite of that. You know is the site exists, and all the info and links are still accurate and still directs customers to your business. And then it disappears through no fault of your own. I mean.. if I don’t use my Facebook account anymore I wouldn’t expect Facebook to delete everyone else’s profile?

cyphar 6y ago

Sadly, this mentality reminds me a lot of the great GeoCities purge of 2009. Have you considered partnering with the Internet Archive to back up any publicly-accessible classic sites which you plan to purge? Whether or not a site has had visitors recently isn't a fair measure of the importance of those sites -- for instance, there were examples of digital shrines in GeoCities and Yahoo still decided to eradicate them all. It was only thanks to projects like the Internet Archive that we haven't lost that period of internet history just to free up some disk platter space. EDIT: I also am struggling to understand what this means: > To me, archiving those sites doesn't feel like destruction, it feels like backing up unused content and protecting it for the user. What does "archiving" mean here? Will the sites still be accessible or not? Is "archive" here a euphemism for "delete" -- in which case, how is it not like destruction and how is it like a "backup"? I'm not sure most people would consider "rm -rf" to be a backup strategy, but it definitely does have very good storage density.

csours 6y ago
There's a big disconnect between technological work and emotional work. If I make myself a digital scrapbook online, it may not have many visitors (or any) just like a scrapbook may sit on a shelf for years without being touched; but the emotional impact when you do pick it up again is huge. Kind of like comparing a scrapbook to a best seller novel.
mattzito 6y ago
"Archiving" means that each site will be converted into an HTML export and placed in their Google Drive, and a separate copy will be converted to a new site and placed in a draft (unpublished) state in their Google Drive. They can choose to republish that new Site, or take the HTML export and move it to a new platform of their choosing.
- prepend 6y ago
  And thus taking it offline. My concern isn’t that the files don’t exist any more,I think it’s nice to zip it and add it to the owners gdrive, my concern is that the files are no longer accessible on the web. So all the links are broken, no longer in search, etc. This seems like a much larger issue than archiving and it would be cool to hear how you all decided to take the sites offline. Is it a cost issue? I imagine hosting a billion static sites shouldn’t cost much.

teach 6y ago

My anecdata agrees; I received the email and _vaguely_ remember maybe having done this at some point. Certainly it's nothing I want to keep, whatever it is. Yet when I visited the Classic Sites Manager it shows nothing. ("0 owned by you" and 0s all the way down the rest of the suggested filters.) False positive, maybe? The email sounded like y'all were pretty certain: "We’ve identified that you own one or more ACTIVE classic Sites."

mattzito 6y ago
Possibly? It's possible that the emails were sent on a data pull at some point, and in between data pull and emailing, you deleted the classic site. Or potentially there was a wire crossed somewhere. I apologize for the extra email either way - if the Classic Sites Manager shows no sites, you are good to go.

dwheeler 6y ago

> I will say that the vast vast majority of these sites (unfortunately I can't disclose the number) have not received edits or even visits for more than two years I'm having a hard time understanding why that would justify deleting that information forever. If anything, that suggests that providing static access would be enough and nearly zero-cost. Storage costs are a fraction of what they were. I do a lot of searching for computer-related historical information, e.g., looking for rationales of "why something happened". Once information is destroyed it's often impossible to recover. No one might look at it for 30 years, and then there's only one retrieval but it was an important retrieval. We've had a tremendous loss of recent information. This isn't the only example, but it's an important one. I'd like to see information retained, not lost.

bachmeier 6y ago

> From our research, a lot of users don't realize that these sites are still published, and in some cases don't want this content out there in the world. I had forgotten about my Google site until seeing this posted. The last update of any kind was early 2013; most content was from 2011 or earlier. Some of the information on the site is wrong, a lot irrelevant, and worst of all, someone might not find my real site because of that one. I'd much prefer a dead site stop working to leaving it out there.

freehunter 6y ago
Now imagine your the opposite of that. You know is the site exists, and all the info and links are still accurate and still directs customers to your business. And then it disappears through no fault of your own. I mean.. if I don’t use my Facebook account anymore I wouldn’t expect Facebook to delete everyone else’s profile?