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

[phoebe ayers]

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 7:13 AM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/5/5 Aryeh Gregor <Simetrical+wikilist at gmail.com>:
>
>> Of course, since all of Wikimedia's data is freely available, anyone
>> else who'd like to store it in some durable form for any sum of money
>> is absolutely free to do so.  Or they could give Wikimedia a directed
>> grant.  But it would be a waste of Wikimedia's money.
>
>
> The best way is to make archives readily available so there are *lots*
> of copies.
>
> So first we need good dumps for people to make lots of copies of ...

What David said :) Good dumps being made readily available leaves the
door open for others to do whatever they like with the information,
including etching, copying by hand, delivering to space, etc. But
without that first step of sharing the data we've got, everything else
about archival preservation is a little problematic. Only the
Foundation is in a position to make the project data available at the
moment, and it should be a key priority. Short-term success is making
us a bit long-term complacent, I think.

-- Phoebe, who had the joy of handling and writing about an original
copy of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclopaedia,_or_Universal_Dictionary_of_Arts_and_Sciences
once, and who believes that there is value in 'old encyclopedias' as
well as new.