[Foundation-l] Subject: Re: Subject: Re: Vendetta?

Thank you all for your support. The editors involved stirred up the pot and learned something in the process. One of them had already been warned about deleting content just for the fun of it, so this was instructional for all. In looking through the threads, one of them found one of my efforts, didn't like it and decided to traverse all the content to which I had contributed (thus the appearance of a "vendetta") This did bring up some very important issues that we all need to consider: 1. The recent past is also historically important. Events that occurred less than 20 years ago in real time are already as remote in Internet time as the times of the first Pharoahs of Egypt in real time. 2. We are already so used to online access to everything that the concept of actually going to a library and digging through old newspapers or memorabilia is alien to the young. 3. Efforts to preserve Silicon Valley's recent past by the Computer History Museum, the Intel Museum, the Tech Museum, the now defunct Ampex Museum, the Perham Collection at History San Jose (originally the Foothill College Electronics Museum) and others need the kind of online support that WP provides. WP contributors can help create a legacy for coming generations by citing these resources, performing research using their collections and writing commentary. 4. Many of us still have original documents from events in the recent past. How can these be preserved so future historians will have source material? 5. Many other locations in the world have had similar social changes - how about a WM project that seeks to capture the pase before it vanishes completely? 6. The captured past is already being lost by preservationists. I was involved in an episodic performance arts web site launched in 1995 that was included in the very first capture of the Internet by archives.org - That capture has already vanished! (later ones are still present). On 12/16/2011 3:34 PM, foundation-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org wrote: