5 ms·

DPReview is being archived by the Archive Team

478 points by jacooper 4y ago

k12sosse 4y ago
Just a reminder, you can donate to archive.org. [1] [1] https://archive.org/donate https://archive.org/donate
- imwillofficial 4y ago
  Is that the same as these guys? https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Main_Page https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Main_Page
  - mellosouls 4y ago
    No, the link above in the parent comment is misleading perhaps due to the misunderstanding about who is doing this - but the data will be stored there so it's a valid link. The donation link for the people doing the work appears to be: https://opencollective.com/archiveteam https://opencollective.com/archiveteam The get involved link is: https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Who_We_Are https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Who_We_Are
    - tech234a 4y ago
      Note: I've generally seen Archive Team encourage donations to archive.org [1]. [1]: https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Donate https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Donate
- fsckboy 4y ago
  > Just a reminder, you can donate to archive.org I'm all for giving money to make the internet better, but the high profile projects (wikipedia, archive.org, ) are generally extremely well funded already, to the extent that they engage in all sorts of ancillary programs not directly on the main mission. Whereas if you give money to create and sustain more sites, niche sites, struggling sites, that creates more content and communities that archive.org is going to archive anyway. (web.archive.org WaybackMachine already has dpreview.com archived, how is this project something new? translating all the URLs or something?)
capableweb 4y ago
The title is wrong, Archive Team (https://wiki.archiveteam.org/ https://wiki.archiveteam.org/) is behind these archiving efforts, not The Internet Archive. The dump will surely end up being stored at the The Internet Archive, but they are two different entities with different collaborators and different goals. Archive Team describes themselves like this: > Archive Team is a loose collective of rogue archivists, programmers, writers and loudmouths dedicated to saving our digital heritage. If you want to contribute to the efforts, you can join #dprived (on hackint), once the Warrior (https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/ArchiveTeam_Warrior https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/ArchiveTeam_Warrior) project is up and running, it's really easy to contribute. Basically run a VM and you're up and running.
- jacooper 4y ago
  Fixed.
- notpushkin 4y ago
  Or a Docker container, if that's easier for you! https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/ArchiveTeam_Warrior#Installing_and_running_with_Docker https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/ArchiveTeam_Warrior#I... Perhaps run it right away even if #dprived isn't ready for the Warrior yet – you'll be helping Archive Team folks save other stuff, like Telegram and Reddit.
  - formerly_proven 4y ago
    Can you select which kinds of sites it touches? Blindly copying/uploading content from e.g. Telegram or Reddit is problematic in various jurisdictions.
    - notpushkin 4y ago
      Here's the current list of projects I see in the dashboard: URLTeam 2 (URL shorteners), Heroku, Clara.io, issuu, Zhihu, pixiv, Telegram, Reddit, YouTube, Periscope, GitHub (in cooperation with Internet Archive and GitHub), MediaFire, Google Sites Classic, Pastebin, VKontakte, Stack Exchange, and some generic ones grabbing URLs from various sources. You can choose what project you'd like to work on if you're concerned with legal issues: https://u.ale.sh/warrior-projects.png https://u.ale.sh/warrior-projects.png
rr808 4y ago
I'm going to miss that site. I'll probably never buy another camera - but still liked reading it. I guess that's why Amazon is shutting it down.
mullingitover 4y ago
As a photographer I'm livid that Amazon bought DPReview just to run it into the ground. That site was a treasure trove of knowledge and it'll be missed. I will go out of my way to be sure I never purchase a scrap of camera gear on Amazon again.
- davidgay 4y ago
  > As a photographer I'm livid that Amazon bought DPReview just to run it into the ground. Amazon ran it for longer (13 years) than it's original owner (12 years). That's not "run it into the ground". Complaints are more convincing (I don't like dpreview being closed either) when they are reasonable.
  - stonemetal12 4y ago
    How does length of ownership have any bearing on quality of execution?
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    Amazon could’ve turned it over to the community, right? Maybe throw in some AWS credits until they could move to a server or two?
    - nickthegreek 4y ago
      Or sold it to someone who wanted to continue to run it. It's value could not have been zero.
      - mynegation 4y ago
        Amazon would probably spend more money on lawyers managing the sale than receive from the sale.
        alexvoda 4y ago
        And spending some money in order to not destroy an important knowledge resource may be the right choice especially if the alternative means burning some good will.
PTOB 4y ago
This is a bit heartbreaking. So few good sources of info like this.
tambourine_man 4y ago
I’m so glad there are people doing these jobs. True heroes of our time.
mortenjorck 4y ago
While it’s heartening to see the preservation community step up like this, I’m still left wondering what Amazon’s alternatives might have been. Granted, finding a buyer would have likely been extremely tough in today’s media landscape, and I have to imagine the site was losing money in recent years, yet I can’t help but imagine some kind of leaner version of it sticking around. Maybe some of the long-time editors and contributors will still put something together. The hard part might actually be the site itself – something like Substack would be a poor fit compared to the highly-customized, product-centric architecture of DPReview.
- capableweb 4y ago
  Cost of running a website like that is essentially everything but the actual infrastructure of keeping the HTML and data going across the wire. Since Amazon also runs AWS, they can essentially run the website for free (as they surely don't pay for traffic like the normal cloud-pleebs do). Stop updating the website but still leaving it online would have cost them a minimal amount of money but left them with infinitive amount of goodwill in the community compared to what they ended up doing.
dang 4y ago
Recent and related: DPReview.com to close - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35248296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35248296 - March 2023 (346 comments) Also: DPReview Is Shutting Down - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35258299 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35258299 - March 2023 (1 comment) Amazon is shutting down DPReview, the go-to camera reviews website - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35257349 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35257349 - March 2023 (4 comments) Amazon layoffs will shut down camera review site DPReview.com after 25 years - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35252372 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35252372 - March 2023 (1 comment) Dpreview to be shut down in another round of Amazon layoffs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35250086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35250086 - March 2023 (2 comments)
1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
<H1>403 ERROR</H1> <H2>The request could not be satisfied.</H2> <HR noshade size="1px"> Request blocked. We can't connect to the server for this app or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a configuration error. Try again later, or contact the app or website owner. <BR clear="all"> If you provide content to customers through CloudFront, you can find steps to troubleshoot and help prevent this error by reviewing the CloudFront documentation.
- TheTechRobo 4y ago
  Archive Team hasn't really done much yet - all they've done is an ArchiveBot job, which isn't getting anywhere because of DPReview's ratelimits, and some discovery scrapes. This is probably a different issue.
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
    https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/DPReview https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/DPReview
    - TheTechRobo 4y ago
      Yes, what is your point?
nixass 4y ago
It would be hilarious if it was archived on S3
Tepix 4y ago
Chris Niccolls and Jordan Drake have been amazing in terms of producing a huge quantity of high quality reviews and videos over the years. I'm happy that they found new positions at Petapixel: https://petapixel.com/2023/03/21/chris-niccolls-and-jordan-drake-join-petapixel-to-lead-its-youtube-channel/ https://petapixel.com/2023/03/21/chris-niccolls-and-jordan-d...
DeathArrow 4y ago
As a photographer that's very sad. I've learned a lot by speaking with people on DPReview forums and seeing the works of others there. Even the reviews were good enough. I wonder were DPReview regulars will be going to hang on. I wish Amazon never bought DPReview.
DeathArrow 4y ago
This reminds me of Steve's Digicams shutting down.
- NKosmatos 4y ago
  I agree, sad to see these two big photography resources disappear. I’ve spent many hours reading and learning many thin*s about cameras, lenses and other photography related stuff from DPreview and Steve’s Digicams.
kepler1 4y ago
What this indicates to me is that most websites are in a constant state of breaking and needing maintenance, such that no company wants to have even a small distraction / obligation / annoyance of keeping a site up. Has the feel of like, you inherit a free building that's constantly falling apart, might as well get rid of it, no matter how many people find it useful. Is that the reality of owning a website?
- sourcecodeplz 4y ago
  When you are dealing with UGC, it's moderation that can become costly, depending on the magnitude.
- schrijver 4y ago
  It is, as long as you want to keep the site dynamic. If there’s a CMS for authors and editors or commenting possibilities that you want to keep using. Any form of separation between form content requires external tools that need upkeep. For example, if you use Wordpress, you’ll have to keep updating WP because of security risks, but then you’ll also have to keep adapting your templates to keep up with the changes in WP. However, once you no longer need to update the site and simple want to display its contents, you can fix it in time by crawling the website, in much the same way that the Archive team is doing now. You end up with a collection of HTML files that you can host with ease and minimal maintenance. If you do it properly , you turn off commenting beforehand so you don’t end up with non-functioning links, and you create an .htaccess that makes sure the old dynamic urls get correctly mapped to your new static files. I’ve done this, it’s not rocket science, it’s not unreasonable to ask this from Amazon, and I wish it was standard practice for sunset websites.
rurp 4y ago
Many folks are justifying this decision on the basis that Amazon might lose some amount of money keeping the site up so of course they are shutting it down. That take isn't wrong, but man it's depressing. The lack of common goods in the digital world bums me out, especially since that world keeps occupying more and more of people's time. In the physical world there are countless spaces that exist as an open ended resource that people can use in a myriad of ways to enhance their lives and community. Things like city parks, libraries, national parks, blm land, lakes, etc. Places that will likely exist for decades or centuries. But there is almost none of that online. Most things are run by profit maximizing corporations that only look at the world through that one lens. I don't think it _has_ to be this way, but unfortunately the current culture is too ok with it for much to change in the foreseeable future.
- troutwine 4y ago
  > In the physical world there are countless spaces that exist as an open ended resource that people can use in a myriad of ways to enhance their lives and community. Things like city parks, libraries, national parks, blm land, lakes, etc. Places that will likely exist for decades or centuries. But there is almost none of that online. Most things are run by profit maximizing corporations that only look at the world through that one lens. And even these need constant upkeep to preserve from the paperclip maximizers we've put in the heart of our economic system. Some of what makes the web so ephemeral is the need to constantly maintain it, even if that maintenance is low, and it's so convenient to just stop that maintenance. I do imagine we'll eventually figure it out -- on the scale of things, we haven't been _doing_ the web for all that long -- but I bet the places that last will start out as long-term concerns with an ethos not unlike a library, an ethos much, much different than you'll find at any place trying to maximize paperclips in a finite world. Wikipedia seems like a lasting public good, Internet Archive (knock on wood) as well.
- sdht0 4y ago
  Wikipedia and Internet Archive and all open source stuff out there makes it a little less depressing.
lofaszvanitt 4y ago
I liked the site, but... Final dslr reviews took weeks, sometimes months or longer to be delivered to the people. I mean, when every gungho yt content creator shits out "reviews" on release day 1, what did they expect? The now we're gonna make video reviews initiative was very, very shallow with lots of fillers. Their forum was the absolute worst ever conceived. News and article writing was rooted in the 90s era like content creation. So in essence zero evolvement in the last 10+ years. All this while sitting in the shadow of a megacorp... well, it was quite a feat.
varjag 4y ago
Digital photography is dead
PigeonR 4y ago
[dead]

478 points by jacooper 4y ago

k12sosse 4y ago

Just a reminder, you can donate to archive.org. [1] [1] https://archive.org/donate https://archive.org/donate

imwillofficial 4y ago
Is that the same as these guys? https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Main_Page https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Main_Page
- mellosouls 4y ago
  No, the link above in the parent comment is misleading perhaps due to the misunderstanding about who is doing this - but the data will be stored there so it's a valid link. The donation link for the people doing the work appears to be: https://opencollective.com/archiveteam https://opencollective.com/archiveteam The get involved link is: https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Who_We_Are https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Who_We_Are
  - tech234a 4y ago
    Note: I've generally seen Archive Team encourage donations to archive.org [1]. [1]: https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Donate https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Donate
fsckboy 4y ago
> Just a reminder, you can donate to archive.org I'm all for giving money to make the internet better, but the high profile projects (wikipedia, archive.org, ) are generally extremely well funded already, to the extent that they engage in all sorts of ancillary programs not directly on the main mission. Whereas if you give money to create and sustain more sites, niche sites, struggling sites, that creates more content and communities that archive.org is going to archive anyway. (web.archive.org WaybackMachine already has dpreview.com archived, how is this project something new? translating all the URLs or something?)

capableweb 4y ago

The title is wrong, Archive Team (https://wiki.archiveteam.org/ https://wiki.archiveteam.org/) is behind these archiving efforts, not The Internet Archive. The dump will surely end up being stored at the The Internet Archive, but they are two different entities with different collaborators and different goals. Archive Team describes themselves like this: > Archive Team is a loose collective of rogue archivists, programmers, writers and loudmouths dedicated to saving our digital heritage. If you want to contribute to the efforts, you can join #dprived (on hackint), once the Warrior (https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/ArchiveTeam_Warrior https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/ArchiveTeam_Warrior) project is up and running, it's really easy to contribute. Basically run a VM and you're up and running.

jacooper 4y ago
Fixed.
notpushkin 4y ago
Or a Docker container, if that's easier for you! https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/ArchiveTeam_Warrior#Installing_and_running_with_Docker https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/ArchiveTeam_Warrior#I... Perhaps run it right away even if #dprived isn't ready for the Warrior yet – you'll be helping Archive Team folks save other stuff, like Telegram and Reddit.
- formerly_proven 4y ago
  Can you select which kinds of sites it touches? Blindly copying/uploading content from e.g. Telegram or Reddit is problematic in various jurisdictions.
  - notpushkin 4y ago
    Here's the current list of projects I see in the dashboard: URLTeam 2 (URL shorteners), Heroku, Clara.io, issuu, Zhihu, pixiv, Telegram, Reddit, YouTube, Periscope, GitHub (in cooperation with Internet Archive and GitHub), MediaFire, Google Sites Classic, Pastebin, VKontakte, Stack Exchange, and some generic ones grabbing URLs from various sources. You can choose what project you'd like to work on if you're concerned with legal issues: https://u.ale.sh/warrior-projects.png https://u.ale.sh/warrior-projects.png

rr808 4y ago

I'm going to miss that site. I'll probably never buy another camera - but still liked reading it. I guess that's why Amazon is shutting it down.

mullingitover 4y ago

As a photographer I'm livid that Amazon bought DPReview just to run it into the ground. That site was a treasure trove of knowledge and it'll be missed. I will go out of my way to be sure I never purchase a scrap of camera gear on Amazon again.

davidgay 4y ago
> As a photographer I'm livid that Amazon bought DPReview just to run it into the ground. Amazon ran it for longer (13 years) than it's original owner (12 years). That's not "run it into the ground". Complaints are more convincing (I don't like dpreview being closed either) when they are reasonable.
- stonemetal12 4y ago
  How does length of ownership have any bearing on quality of execution?
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Amazon could’ve turned it over to the community, right? Maybe throw in some AWS credits until they could move to a server or two?
  - nickthegreek 4y ago
    Or sold it to someone who wanted to continue to run it. It's value could not have been zero.
    - mynegation 4y ago
      Amazon would probably spend more money on lawyers managing the sale than receive from the sale.
      - alexvoda 4y ago
        And spending some money in order to not destroy an important knowledge resource may be the right choice especially if the alternative means burning some good will.

PTOB 4y ago

This is a bit heartbreaking. So few good sources of info like this.

tambourine_man 4y ago

I’m so glad there are people doing these jobs. True heroes of our time.

mortenjorck 4y ago

While it’s heartening to see the preservation community step up like this, I’m still left wondering what Amazon’s alternatives might have been. Granted, finding a buyer would have likely been extremely tough in today’s media landscape, and I have to imagine the site was losing money in recent years, yet I can’t help but imagine some kind of leaner version of it sticking around. Maybe some of the long-time editors and contributors will still put something together. The hard part might actually be the site itself – something like Substack would be a poor fit compared to the highly-customized, product-centric architecture of DPReview.

capableweb 4y ago
Cost of running a website like that is essentially everything but the actual infrastructure of keeping the HTML and data going across the wire. Since Amazon also runs AWS, they can essentially run the website for free (as they surely don't pay for traffic like the normal cloud-pleebs do). Stop updating the website but still leaving it online would have cost them a minimal amount of money but left them with infinitive amount of goodwill in the community compared to what they ended up doing.

dang 4y ago

Recent and related: DPReview.com to close - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35248296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35248296 - March 2023 (346 comments) Also: DPReview Is Shutting Down - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35258299 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35258299 - March 2023 (1 comment) Amazon is shutting down DPReview, the go-to camera reviews website - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35257349 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35257349 - March 2023 (4 comments) Amazon layoffs will shut down camera review site DPReview.com after 25 years - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35252372 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35252372 - March 2023 (1 comment) Dpreview to be shut down in another round of Amazon layoffs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35250086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35250086 - March 2023 (2 comments)

1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago

<H1>403 ERROR</H1> <H2>The request could not be satisfied.</H2> <HR noshade size="1px"> Request blocked. We can't connect to the server for this app or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a configuration error. Try again later, or contact the app or website owner. <BR clear="all"> If you provide content to customers through CloudFront, you can find steps to troubleshoot and help prevent this error by reviewing the CloudFront documentation.

TheTechRobo 4y ago
Archive Team hasn't really done much yet - all they've done is an ArchiveBot job, which isn't getting anywhere because of DPReview's ratelimits, and some discovery scrapes. This is probably a different issue.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
  https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/DPReview https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/DPReview
  - TheTechRobo 4y ago
    Yes, what is your point?

nixass 4y ago

It would be hilarious if it was archived on S3

Tepix 4y ago

Chris Niccolls and Jordan Drake have been amazing in terms of producing a huge quantity of high quality reviews and videos over the years. I'm happy that they found new positions at Petapixel: https://petapixel.com/2023/03/21/chris-niccolls-and-jordan-drake-join-petapixel-to-lead-its-youtube-channel/ https://petapixel.com/2023/03/21/chris-niccolls-and-jordan-d...

DeathArrow 4y ago

As a photographer that's very sad. I've learned a lot by speaking with people on DPReview forums and seeing the works of others there. Even the reviews were good enough. I wonder were DPReview regulars will be going to hang on. I wish Amazon never bought DPReview.

DeathArrow 4y ago

This reminds me of Steve's Digicams shutting down.

NKosmatos 4y ago
I agree, sad to see these two big photography resources disappear. I’ve spent many hours reading and learning many thin*s about cameras, lenses and other photography related stuff from DPreview and Steve’s Digicams.

kepler1 4y ago

What this indicates to me is that most websites are in a constant state of breaking and needing maintenance, such that no company wants to have even a small distraction / obligation / annoyance of keeping a site up. Has the feel of like, you inherit a free building that's constantly falling apart, might as well get rid of it, no matter how many people find it useful. Is that the reality of owning a website?

sourcecodeplz 4y ago
When you are dealing with UGC, it's moderation that can become costly, depending on the magnitude.
schrijver 4y ago
It is, as long as you want to keep the site dynamic. If there’s a CMS for authors and editors or commenting possibilities that you want to keep using. Any form of separation between form content requires external tools that need upkeep. For example, if you use Wordpress, you’ll have to keep updating WP because of security risks, but then you’ll also have to keep adapting your templates to keep up with the changes in WP. However, once you no longer need to update the site and simple want to display its contents, you can fix it in time by crawling the website, in much the same way that the Archive team is doing now. You end up with a collection of HTML files that you can host with ease and minimal maintenance. If you do it properly , you turn off commenting beforehand so you don’t end up with non-functioning links, and you create an .htaccess that makes sure the old dynamic urls get correctly mapped to your new static files. I’ve done this, it’s not rocket science, it’s not unreasonable to ask this from Amazon, and I wish it was standard practice for sunset websites.

rurp 4y ago

Many folks are justifying this decision on the basis that Amazon might lose some amount of money keeping the site up so of course they are shutting it down. That take isn't wrong, but man it's depressing. The lack of common goods in the digital world bums me out, especially since that world keeps occupying more and more of people's time. In the physical world there are countless spaces that exist as an open ended resource that people can use in a myriad of ways to enhance their lives and community. Things like city parks, libraries, national parks, blm land, lakes, etc. Places that will likely exist for decades or centuries. But there is almost none of that online. Most things are run by profit maximizing corporations that only look at the world through that one lens. I don't think it _has_ to be this way, but unfortunately the current culture is too ok with it for much to change in the foreseeable future.

troutwine 4y ago
> In the physical world there are countless spaces that exist as an open ended resource that people can use in a myriad of ways to enhance their lives and community. Things like city parks, libraries, national parks, blm land, lakes, etc. Places that will likely exist for decades or centuries. But there is almost none of that online. Most things are run by profit maximizing corporations that only look at the world through that one lens. And even these need constant upkeep to preserve from the paperclip maximizers we've put in the heart of our economic system. Some of what makes the web so ephemeral is the need to constantly maintain it, even if that maintenance is low, and it's so convenient to just stop that maintenance. I do imagine we'll eventually figure it out -- on the scale of things, we haven't been _doing_ the web for all that long -- but I bet the places that last will start out as long-term concerns with an ethos not unlike a library, an ethos much, much different than you'll find at any place trying to maximize paperclips in a finite world. Wikipedia seems like a lasting public good, Internet Archive (knock on wood) as well.
sdht0 4y ago
Wikipedia and Internet Archive and all open source stuff out there makes it a little less depressing.

lofaszvanitt 4y ago

I liked the site, but... Final dslr reviews took weeks, sometimes months or longer to be delivered to the people. I mean, when every gungho yt content creator shits out "reviews" on release day 1, what did they expect? The now we're gonna make video reviews initiative was very, very shallow with lots of fillers. Their forum was the absolute worst ever conceived. News and article writing was rooted in the 90s era like content creation. So in essence zero evolvement in the last 10+ years. All this while sitting in the shadow of a megacorp... well, it was quite a feat.

varjag 4y ago

Digital photography is dead

PigeonR 4y ago

[dead]