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Despite it's infamy, Yahoo Answers was the largest Q&A website for a long time and is a huge part of our digital heritage. Soon, it will be gone forever. The Ar
by surround 6y ago
Despite it's infamy, Yahoo Answers was the largest Q&A website for a long time and is a huge part of our digital heritage. Soon, it will be gone forever. The ArchiveTeam will be doing all they can back up as much as possible before it's too late, but IP address rate-limiting is a huge roadblock. If you want to help, download the ArchiveTeam Warrior and run it in the background. It doesn't use a ton of resources - they just need more IP addresses.
https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/ArchiveTeam_Warrior https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/ArchiveTeam_Warrior
- cormorant 6y agoI'm willing to donate my IP address, but is this active or is it still being set up? I downloaded the Warrior but don't see Yahoo Answers as an available project.
- ajayyy 6y agoIt is not active yet. If you select "recommended project", then it will probably switch when the time comes. For now, it is reddit. Check http://chat.efnet.org:9090/?channels=%23noanswers http://chat.efnet.org:9090/?channels=%23noanswers for updates.
- tech234a 6y agoThat was the link for the old project from 2016-2017. In 2020, Archive Team switched IRC networks, so the current link is https://webirc.hackint.org/#irc://irc.hackint.org/%23noanswers https://webirc.hackint.org/#irc://irc.hackint.org/%23noanswe...
- okanesen 6y agoMinor correction: https://webirc.hackint.org/#irc://irc.hackint.org/noanswers https://webirc.hackint.org/#irc://irc.hackint.org/noanswers Without the %23 prefix.
- agumonkey 6y agooh interesting, I'll try to contribute too.
- judge2020 6y agoNote: ArchiveTeam is not the same people as archive.org, however, the results will indeed eventually end up on archive.org (since archive.org takes donated WARC data). More at https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Internet_Archive#Backing_up_the_Internet_Archive:~:text=Let%20us%20clarify%20once%20again https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Internet_Archive#Back...
- unityByFreedom 6y agoHold on, who is behind https://archiveteam.org https://archiveteam.org? Folks, careful what extensions you add.
- neolog 6y agoThe "who we are" link on that page answers your questions.
- blagie 6y agoI'm not questioning this particular site, but if you're unfamiliar with a project, trusting a "who we are" link is just about the worst way to verify it. You're bound to be p4wn3d. Anyone can claim to be anyone. Personally, I'd look for a link from e.g. eff.org, or a similar trusted site. Why should you trust me? I'm Larry Page. Why should you trust that I'm Larry Page? Simple. Look at the "Who am I" part of this post. Who am I: Larry Page, obviously. As a footnote, I'd never run something like this on my computer, but if it's just IPs you want, an RPi image would get you my IP.
- neolog 6y agoI don't think I've ever seen a webpage that claims to be owned by someone other than the real owner, aside from typosquat phishing sites.
- djhn 6y agoI reckon scam sites pretending to be reputable newspapers and mimicking their layout and contents to push investment scams via social media ads should qualify. And heck, any and all phishing sites, by definition. So millions of websites?
- MichaelApproved 6y agoI’d like to contribute but I’m nervous about allowing random content to be downloaded through my connection. Does anyone happen to know what safeguards exist to protect against random child porn or other illegal content from flowing through my connection? I checked the site but didn’t see anything address this concern. My fear is the archive grabs a page that happens to have nefarious content which I’d be legally on the hook for. Am I being overly cautious or is there a genuine risk?
- ajayyy 6y agoIf you choose the Yahoo Answers project, it will only be downloading stuff from Yahoo Answers
- sellyme 6y ago> Am I being overly cautious or is there a genuine risk? You're being overly cautious. There is no legal risk in viewing a Yahoo! Answers page (or any other ArchiveTeam Warrior recommended project for that matter).
- MichaelApproved 6y agoI just realized this tool is dedicated to specific archiving projects, not general site archiving that archive.org offers. I was worried about random websites that get archived on archive.org.
- Wingy 6y agoIt’s the same as looking at the pages directly in a browser. A browser also caches images it sees in most cases.
- Jarwain 6y agoI think that Technically it's possible, If for some reason Yahoo Answers had illegal content that was never reported and moderated away. I think thats pretty unlikely, though; I'd expect yahoo to be pretty on top of moderation if only due to liability reasons Alternatively, the collection code could do something weird or suspicious, but it's open source and the team has a good reputation/enough social proof leading me to consider that unlikely
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tijuco2 6y agoOk, I have my machine set up, but the project you're asking us to help with isn't available.
- thinkloop 6y ago> It doesn't use a ton of resources - they just need more IP addresses. Aren't you also providing 100% of the resources if they are using your IP, or is there a way for them to do most of the work "behind" your IP?
- sellyme 6y ago> Aren't you also providing 100% of the resources if they are using your IP 100% of what resources? Bandwidth, yes - you need to download the answers and then upload them to the archive. Fortunately it compresses fantastically so the uploads are fairly inconsequential. Even more fortunately, Yahoo! Answers is text-based, making the bandwidth usage pretty minor compared to almost any other past Archive Team project. It's really the overhead of each individual network request that they're trying to outsource here. But for storage? You're providing approximately 0% of that. Files are only stored on your device for long enough for your computer to hand them off to a more permanent home at archive.org. CPU usage is also very minimal - again, thanks to text compressing super easily, the compression settings don't need to be particularly aggressive.
- moonbug 6y agoPhew. good to know future generations will still be able to find out how babby is made.
- apples_oranges 6y agoYou seem convinced that there is no good content on Yahoo Answers..
- Sohcahtoa82 6y agoIt's like 4chan. Sometimes there's some good content, but you gotta wade through the 99% sewage to see any of it.
- ai_ja_nai 6y agobeside the historycal antropological value, and all the associated hilarity, there is very little content worth saving
- muzani 6y agoI used it in college before Wolfram Alpha and Stack Overflow were popular. "How is babby made" seems to be the median quality content there.
- criddell 6y agoI have a hard time believing that the value of the content exceeds the resource cost of archiving it.
- lucb1e 5y agoThe project is active as of 5 minutes ago, for anyone wishing to contribute. The projection given on IRC was "There's no way we'll get them all" and "assuming 150 million items, we need to go ~5 times what we are now" so help is appreciated!
- dan15 5y agoI've got several spare VPSes that are currently just idling, so I'll see if I can donate them to this cause.