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

[Anthony]

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.


Not true.  I'm considering the historical value, but I'm recognizing the
fact that it must be heavily discounted due to the fact that it takes place
so far in the future.  Moreover, my statement above is that *someone* will
consider the value to be more than it actually is.  That isn't a statement
that's true in general of all information, but rather one about the type of
people who work on Wikipedia.

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!).


I certainly wouldn't argue that history is useless.  My argument would be
more along the lines that concern about things that won't affect humans for
thousands of years is virtually useless.  Not quite completely useless, but
fairly close.  There is a minor value to handing my children a world in
which they can hand their children a world in which they can hand their
children a world in which they can hand their children a world in which they
can hand their children a world in which they can hand their children a
world in which we know a little bit more about this particular time period -
but not much.