4 ms·

Love the reasoning: > The Internet Archive Book Images recently deleted their Flickr account. > Flickr and Internet Archive were in agreement on this because:

Love the reasoning: > The Internet Archive Book Images recently deleted their Flickr account. > Flickr and Internet Archive were in agreement on this because: > (1) The account was largely comprised of scans of book images, not photos. > (2) The account was no longer being actively managed by Internet Archive. > (3) The book images tended to show up in irrelevant search results of Flickr Commons photography. While one can argue that scans != photos, 2 and 3 sound like lame excuses.

CharlesW 5y ago
> While one can argue that scans != photos, 2 and 3 sound like lame excuses. How so? My take: Dead accounts of not-photos don't seem great for Flickr or its users.
- martin_a 5y ago
  Why not conserve it? From the forum posting it seems like lots of users enjoyed those images, collected and organized them and whatnot. I see a use for them, but it's obviously not as "shiny" as flickr would like its content to be, probably.
  - CharlesW 5y ago
    > Why not conserve it? FWIW, the 5 million book illustrations are still on Internet Archive somewhere (the key being "somewhere"). The loss of the metadata and organization is still a shame, of course. IA is a miracle, but can be intimidating compared to Flickr.
  - EarlKing 5y ago
    Because that's not their job? From their perspective it's quite literally spamming up their index and impeding the intended use of the commons. Those images and all associated metadata should have been relocated to archive.org years ago. Instead it appears IA just nuked it outright without consulting anybody to see if any of it was backed up anywhere. The problem here isn't with Flickr, but the clear lack of professionalism on the part of IA in misusing others' resources and then pitching a fit when called out on it.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > My take: Dead accounts of not-photos don't seem great for Flickr or its users. Even if that's the case, this kind of thing should be handled differently (e.g. keep the account, but do some custom thing to down-rank those images in searches or whatever).
  - nodefortytwo 5y ago
    Why should flickr invest time doing that when the IA didn't want the account?
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      > Why should flickr invest time doing that when the IA didn't want the account? That's not how the OP twitter thread presented it.
  - root_axis 5y ago
    Why?
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      > Why? Because I think it's bad form to just up and delete data like this, especially something that's about archiving/preservation.
      - root_axis 5y ago
        How long should they keep data that both the hosting platform and owner of the account agree should be removed? If this isn't sufficient rationale to delete data, what is?
        tablespoon 5y ago
        > How long should they keep data that ... the ... owner of the account agree should be removed? Has the Internet Archive actually made a statement about that? Some Flickr support person claimed they agreed to it in a support thread, but I can imagine a lot of scenarios where there might be an unacceptable amount of spin going on (e.g. Flickr made some unreasonable ultimatum, and IA chose to delete the account instead of accept). > If this isn't sufficient rationale to delete data, what is? That the data is truly unwanted.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
Your quote literally says that the Internet Archive deleted their own account. It sounds like maybe their was some discussion between the two organizations, but unless Flickr is blatantly lying I don’t see any reason to believe that the Internet Archive was wronged.
- martin_a 5y ago
  People also shoot themselves in the head with their hands tied on their back. Point is: flickr should have enough space and whatnot to host all those images if it wanted. They decided to remove that content, because "it appears in search"? Sounds more like it wasn't cool enough so they wanted it gone, found some reasonable reasons and that's it.

CharlesW 5y ago

> While one can argue that scans != photos, 2 and 3 sound like lame excuses. How so? My take: Dead accounts of not-photos don't seem great for Flickr or its users.

martin_a 5y ago
Why not conserve it? From the forum posting it seems like lots of users enjoyed those images, collected and organized them and whatnot. I see a use for them, but it's obviously not as "shiny" as flickr would like its content to be, probably.
- CharlesW 5y ago
  > Why not conserve it? FWIW, the 5 million book illustrations are still on Internet Archive somewhere (the key being "somewhere"). The loss of the metadata and organization is still a shame, of course. IA is a miracle, but can be intimidating compared to Flickr.
- EarlKing 5y ago
  Because that's not their job? From their perspective it's quite literally spamming up their index and impeding the intended use of the commons. Those images and all associated metadata should have been relocated to archive.org years ago. Instead it appears IA just nuked it outright without consulting anybody to see if any of it was backed up anywhere. The problem here isn't with Flickr, but the clear lack of professionalism on the part of IA in misusing others' resources and then pitching a fit when called out on it.
tablespoon 5y ago
> My take: Dead accounts of not-photos don't seem great for Flickr or its users. Even if that's the case, this kind of thing should be handled differently (e.g. keep the account, but do some custom thing to down-rank those images in searches or whatever).
- nodefortytwo 5y ago
  Why should flickr invest time doing that when the IA didn't want the account?
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > Why should flickr invest time doing that when the IA didn't want the account? That's not how the OP twitter thread presented it.
- root_axis 5y ago
  Why?
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > Why? Because I think it's bad form to just up and delete data like this, especially something that's about archiving/preservation.
    - root_axis 5y ago
      How long should they keep data that both the hosting platform and owner of the account agree should be removed? If this isn't sufficient rationale to delete data, what is?
      - tablespoon 5y ago
        > How long should they keep data that ... the ... owner of the account agree should be removed? Has the Internet Archive actually made a statement about that? Some Flickr support person claimed they agreed to it in a support thread, but I can imagine a lot of scenarios where there might be an unacceptable amount of spin going on (e.g. Flickr made some unreasonable ultimatum, and IA chose to delete the account instead of accept). > If this isn't sufficient rationale to delete data, what is? That the data is truly unwanted.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

Your quote literally says that the Internet Archive deleted their own account. It sounds like maybe their was some discussion between the two organizations, but unless Flickr is blatantly lying I don’t see any reason to believe that the Internet Archive was wronged.

martin_a 5y ago
People also shoot themselves in the head with their hands tied on their back. Point is: flickr should have enough space and whatnot to host all those images if it wanted. They decided to remove that content, because "it appears in search"? Sounds more like it wasn't cool enough so they wanted it gone, found some reasonable reasons and that's it.