4 ms·

"Removed" makes it sound like a sin of commission, where it's more likely that they decided to re-build their website and didn't see a point in having a histori

"Removed" makes it sound like a sin of commission, where it's more likely that they decided to re-build their website and didn't see a point in having a historical archive of speeches, policy documents etc. on there. To the extent that political parties are marketing operations rather than history societies, this is not really surprising. I'm not sure how this kind of thing used to be handled prior to the web being a major campaign tool. I wonder how easy it was to get hold of the 1992 Labour election manifesto in 1997, when such things existed only as printed documents. There has always been a thriving cottage industry of political obsessives (in a good way!) who maintain their own archives of this kind of material. It turns out that you can't get old election manifestos from the Labour party, but you can get them here: http://www.labour-party.org.uk/manifestos/ http://www.labour-party.org.uk/manifestos/ - and the Conservative one here: http://www.conservativemanifesto.com/1992/ http://www.conservativemanifesto.com/1992/ I'm not sure what's best here. Should we put greater pressure on political parties (and other similar organisations) to maintain a public history of their own activity despite this being sometimes against their self-interest, or should we support the efforts of third parties who archive this stuff without such conflicts of interest? (Of course, the right answer might be "both").

vidarh 13y ago
They didn't just remove it. They explicitly added these pages to robots.txt, causing their removal from Internet Archive too.
- cs02rm0 13y ago
  Seems like a sensible move to tell crawlers there isn't a page there so don't bother trying to index it. Probably keeps their logs cleaner and reduces the requests they have to serve. I find it slightly odd that the internet archive then drop historical pages, but the jump some are making to this being Orwellian I find a leap too far.
choult 13y ago
I believe the Conservatives (at least) have also disallowed the relevant paths via their robots.txt: http://www.conservatives.com/robots.txt http://www.conservatives.com/robots.txt This then has the effect of removing it from the Internet Archive for a start...
- eliasmacpherson 13y ago
  That is a shame. To my knowledge, no party or politician has ever changed tack after being challenged on the basis that they are contradicting their election promises. But there's something eerily Orwellian about this, we have always been at war with Eurasia. https://archive.org/about/exclude.php https://archive.org/about/exclude.php "The Internet Archive is not interested in offering access to web sites or other Internet documents whose authors do not want their materials in the collection."
- peteretep 13y ago
  Kind of makes sense too - you don't want people searching for Conservative policies at election time accidentally finding the ones with the pressing issues for the last election.
  - choult 13y ago
    ... or for them to be complicit in laying bare their own hypocrisy ...
    - mattmanser 13y ago
      It's not hypocrisy to change your mind or change direction as the situation changes.
      - makomk 13y ago
        Unfortunately, it's becoming increasingly obvious that the Tories never planned on following through with their promises in the first place. Their original justification was that the country's finances were so bad they couldn't afford all the things they'd promised. However, now that everyone's mostly forgotten what they originally said and they've deleted it from the internet David Cameron has declared that his policy of closing and crippling the Government services he got elected on the promise of protecting is permanent and has nothing to do with the country's financial state after all.
      - 7952 13y ago
arethuza 13y ago
That does look interesting, but in general, what is there that allows me to check the authenticity and integrity of those and other "important" online documents?
marrs 13y ago
Maybe we need to think more carefully about how we archive historical data online. After all, suppose someone "discovers" an old manifesto that reveals something controversial: without proof that the content hasn't been altered since it was captured, the content has no validity whatsoever. And taking this to its natural conclusion, a malicious opponent could fake archive data in order to gain an advantage.

vidarh 13y ago

They didn't just remove it. They explicitly added these pages to robots.txt, causing their removal from Internet Archive too.

cs02rm0 13y ago
Seems like a sensible move to tell crawlers there isn't a page there so don't bother trying to index it. Probably keeps their logs cleaner and reduces the requests they have to serve. I find it slightly odd that the internet archive then drop historical pages, but the jump some are making to this being Orwellian I find a leap too far.

choult 13y ago

I believe the Conservatives (at least) have also disallowed the relevant paths via their robots.txt: http://www.conservatives.com/robots.txt http://www.conservatives.com/robots.txt This then has the effect of removing it from the Internet Archive for a start...

eliasmacpherson 13y ago
That is a shame. To my knowledge, no party or politician has ever changed tack after being challenged on the basis that they are contradicting their election promises. But there's something eerily Orwellian about this, we have always been at war with Eurasia. https://archive.org/about/exclude.php https://archive.org/about/exclude.php "The Internet Archive is not interested in offering access to web sites or other Internet documents whose authors do not want their materials in the collection."
peteretep 13y ago
Kind of makes sense too - you don't want people searching for Conservative policies at election time accidentally finding the ones with the pressing issues for the last election.
- choult 13y ago
  ... or for them to be complicit in laying bare their own hypocrisy ...
  - mattmanser 13y ago
    It's not hypocrisy to change your mind or change direction as the situation changes.
    - makomk 13y ago
      Unfortunately, it's becoming increasingly obvious that the Tories never planned on following through with their promises in the first place. Their original justification was that the country's finances were so bad they couldn't afford all the things they'd promised. However, now that everyone's mostly forgotten what they originally said and they've deleted it from the internet David Cameron has declared that his policy of closing and crippling the Government services he got elected on the promise of protecting is permanent and has nothing to do with the country's financial state after all.
    - 7952 13y ago

arethuza 13y ago

That does look interesting, but in general, what is there that allows me to check the authenticity and integrity of those and other "important" online documents?

marrs 13y ago

Maybe we need to think more carefully about how we archive historical data online. After all, suppose someone "discovers" an old manifesto that reveals something controversial: without proof that the content hasn't been altered since it was captured, the content has no validity whatsoever. And taking this to its natural conclusion, a malicious opponent could fake archive data in order to gain an advantage.