Date   : Sun, 28 Feb 2016 13:10:45 -0000
From   : blip@... (John)
Subject: Loss of BBC / Acorn sites

 

I had some thoughts about site archiving and although I hadn?t considered 
Darren?s point about formats here (although interestingly I did for a USB 
based time capsule project last week) the main objection to me is that many 
BBC related sites contain lots of links which of course get broken. So we
have to debate the usefulness of this. As an aside, I found a PC port of
Thrust which looked pretty clever, but sadly didn?t run properly on my Windows
10 laptop...

 

e.g. the www links here http://archive.retro-kit.co.uk/bbc.nvg.org/netresource.php3.html 
are largely broken. There is a further argument we should preserve broken 
links because [ironically on the same site] there are named contributors 
who I think deserve, if they wish, to be named. I have tracked down some 
really interesting people like this, who are happy to contribute their valuable
experiences. One example was the writer of Philosophers? Quest, the sadly
deceased Prof. Peter Killworth.

 

So some sort of centralisation seems to be a requirement, at least for programs
or common diagnostics.

 

So, ignoring the format problem in the short term, which may be unsolvable:

 

1.       We should centralise diagnostic information which hopefully would
not vary much

2.       Programs should be assessed for compatibility (we really do have
to look at virtualisation or emulation here) and centralised

3.       Personal content and acknowledgements should really be archived
where appropriate. Perhaps even a bio store?

- Hopefully Rob, Chris and JG are not going to fall under a bus anytime soon,
but the archive sites sound like a good move. But what does the crawler actually
do JG ?

 

Best,

 

 

John Terry

 

 

 

From: bbc-micro-bounces+blip=blipit.com@... [mailto:bbc-micro-bounces+blip=blipit.com
at lists.cloud9.co.uk] On Behalf Of Darren Grant
Sent: 2016?2?28? 12:20
To: BBC Micro Mailing List
Subject: Re: [BBC-Micro] Loss of BBC / Acorn sites

 

 

On 28 Feb 2016,@10:30, John <blip@...> wrote:

 

 Just thought I?d mention that whilst the loss of individual sites is extensive
although sadly predictable ?

 

This is part of a much larger issue of digital obsolescence that people 
have been grappling with for a long time. The British Library and National 
Archives in particular have been very active in this area. I?m not sure 
that consolidating information into a central location is necessarily the 
answer or particularly worthwhile endeavour. http://www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/ 
is a project by the British Library to create archives of internet sites
but these kinds of projects are far from perfect especially withe the way
many sites have some interactive elements.

 

The problem gets even worse when you take into account that technology changes 
file formats change and often the software required to read them stops functioning
on modern systems requiring the maintaining of emulators and format convertors
that often have a number of quirks that can result.

 

One thing that would make a difference is if people who create their own 
web sites publish it using one of the open licences like Creative Commons
Attribution license so that things don?t fall into the copyright black hole.
People knowing they can copy and re-distribute the content as long as the
original source is credited.

 

Of course the copyright issues were by far the biggest challenge rather than
technical with the Domesday project.