[Foundation-l] Long-term archiving of Wikimedia content

[Chad]

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 12:09 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/5/5 Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org>:
>> I would put a pretty large bet on the fact that someone is going to think
>> they need to keep Wikipedia long past the point where it's worth it to keep
>> it.  Wrong decisions will be made to delete or oversight content, but
>> whatever isn't oversighted or deleted will be kept by someone long after its
>> usefulness has dropped below the cost of maintaining it.  There are lots of
>> packrats working on Wikipedia.
>
> You are only considering the direct useful of the information
> contained, not the historical value it could have in years to come. We
> don't research Roman building methods (to pick a completely random
> example) because we want to use their methods to improve our own
> buildings, we research them to learn more about the Roman people. You
> can argue that history is useless, but I would disagree, as would many
> other people (historians in particular!).
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

In 3000 years, nobody will give a rat's ass about Britney Spears'
discography (again, to pick a random example of "pop culture").
That's a bet I'm willing to make.

-Chad