5 ms·

That still doesn't solve the discoverability problem. The Wayback Machine is only useful if you happen to know the URL where a piece of content used to live.

rglullis 2y ago
That, and the fact that the data is "frozen". There is no way to add a comment to a Reddit thread that has been archived without going to Reddit first. I'd like to have a two-way mirror.
- userbinator 2y ago
  Isn't read-only one of the main points of being "archived"?
  - rglullis 2y ago
    Yeah, but I am saying that I don't want it merely "archived". I want it "copied and available outside of Reddit's control".
    - gaius_baltar 2y ago
      That's lemmy.ml . See this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41143632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41143632 edit: they already did.
      - rglullis 2y ago
        Did you link to my own comment? :)
userbinator 2y ago
Indeed, what's really needed is a search engine that indexes all the content on the Wayback Machine and makes it accessible in a similar fashion as e.g. Google.
- card_zero 2y ago
  The Wayback Machine does that, to some extent. It tends to prefer to return results where the query is in the URL, but sometimes it picks up on the word being in the page. I don't know how much indexing it does, but it does some.
hexage1814 2y ago
>That still doesn't solve the discoverability problem I have a somewhat of a conspiracy theory that deep down they don't implement a search feature on all their content on purpose. Essentially if WB made easy to discover stuff, you end up having to deal more and more with all those shenanigans of people requesting information to be removed. By making the information there, but somewhat unfindable or at least very hard to find, they essentially preserve the information, without having to deal with such problem (I know this happens even nowadays, but if it was easier to find information, it would happen even more).
- Xen9 2y ago
  Raw genius, the site even looks "old" ... On related note, Internet Archive backup would probably cost between 20M and 60M USD. Many EU countries would have incentive to do this as public culture preservation projects. The archive is roughly 70 PB. Decentralized storage projects have achieved 7PB already. Thus attempting a decentralized backup would ALSO work.
  - mellosouls 2y ago
    Many EU countries would have incentive to do this as public culture preservation projects There are multiple archive projects around the world, which often isn't understood when the Internet Archive (the biggest and original) is discussed. Various countries including some EU already have those as "public culture preservation projects", targeting their own nation's web presence. In that context, and with scarce funding already, there is not really an incentive to back up a load of irrelevant (in the sense it's not their country's) archive material.
    - Xen9 2y ago
      Targeting a nation's own web presence cannot capture as complete picture as IA. For example, discussions about minor languages that are vanishing are often English. In addition, IA does not only do archiving of the inernet; it's rather an archive ON the internet that scans, digitalizes & organizes tons of material. Now, notice that the budget of many of these projects are X billions: https://www.ne-mo.org/cooperation-funding/funding-opportunities https://www.ne-mo.org/cooperation-funding/funding-opportunit... Putting a 100 million EUR into an European IA backup would be more cost effective than any of these projects. Alternatively or additionally: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statistics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statis... Wikipedia could actually also probably – being dependent on IA – invest 50M into the project. In fact, this would probably do more what the donations were meant to do than anything else they could do with the ("excess") funds. Truth to be spoken, NSA probably has an IA backup. But it still sort of drives me insane to know that political change or natural catastrophes could lead to loss of public access to the IA. No one seems to care about IA enough except IA itself.

rglullis 2y ago

That, and the fact that the data is "frozen". There is no way to add a comment to a Reddit thread that has been archived without going to Reddit first. I'd like to have a two-way mirror.

userbinator 2y ago
Isn't read-only one of the main points of being "archived"?
- rglullis 2y ago
  Yeah, but I am saying that I don't want it merely "archived". I want it "copied and available outside of Reddit's control".
  - gaius_baltar 2y ago
    That's lemmy.ml . See this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41143632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41143632 edit: they already did.
    - rglullis 2y ago
      Did you link to my own comment? :)

userbinator 2y ago

Indeed, what's really needed is a search engine that indexes all the content on the Wayback Machine and makes it accessible in a similar fashion as e.g. Google.

card_zero 2y ago
The Wayback Machine does that, to some extent. It tends to prefer to return results where the query is in the URL, but sometimes it picks up on the word being in the page. I don't know how much indexing it does, but it does some.

hexage1814 2y ago

>That still doesn't solve the discoverability problem I have a somewhat of a conspiracy theory that deep down they don't implement a search feature on all their content on purpose. Essentially if WB made easy to discover stuff, you end up having to deal more and more with all those shenanigans of people requesting information to be removed. By making the information there, but somewhat unfindable or at least very hard to find, they essentially preserve the information, without having to deal with such problem (I know this happens even nowadays, but if it was easier to find information, it would happen even more).

Xen9 2y ago
Raw genius, the site even looks "old" ... On related note, Internet Archive backup would probably cost between 20M and 60M USD. Many EU countries would have incentive to do this as public culture preservation projects. The archive is roughly 70 PB. Decentralized storage projects have achieved 7PB already. Thus attempting a decentralized backup would ALSO work.
- mellosouls 2y ago
  Many EU countries would have incentive to do this as public culture preservation projects There are multiple archive projects around the world, which often isn't understood when the Internet Archive (the biggest and original) is discussed. Various countries including some EU already have those as "public culture preservation projects", targeting their own nation's web presence. In that context, and with scarce funding already, there is not really an incentive to back up a load of irrelevant (in the sense it's not their country's) archive material.
  - Xen9 2y ago
    Targeting a nation's own web presence cannot capture as complete picture as IA. For example, discussions about minor languages that are vanishing are often English. In addition, IA does not only do archiving of the inernet; it's rather an archive ON the internet that scans, digitalizes & organizes tons of material. Now, notice that the budget of many of these projects are X billions: https://www.ne-mo.org/cooperation-funding/funding-opportunities https://www.ne-mo.org/cooperation-funding/funding-opportunit... Putting a 100 million EUR into an European IA backup would be more cost effective than any of these projects. Alternatively or additionally: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statistics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statis... Wikipedia could actually also probably – being dependent on IA – invest 50M into the project. In fact, this would probably do more what the donations were meant to do than anything else they could do with the ("excess") funds. Truth to be spoken, NSA probably has an IA backup. But it still sort of drives me insane to know that political change or natural catastrophes could lead to loss of public access to the IA. No one seems to care about IA enough except IA itself.