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

[Alex]

David Goodman wrote:
> That is like saying, . Why should i backup my computer now, when there
> will be high capacity media in a few years, or when the next version
> of the OS will do it automatically.
> 
> or, more closely,
> why should a books scanning project even be bothered with now. In
> future generation we might well have scanners that will do it much
> more efficiently without opening the books.
> 

Because hard drive failure is far more likely than civilization
collapsing or all computers ceasing to work or exist at the same time.
Wikimedia has backups and redundancy; just not in a non-electronic form
designed to survive 1000 years/nuclear war/asteroid impact/etc.

This is somewhat the opposite of book scanning. With book scanning,
you're taking something that may only be available to a handful of
people and allowing many more people to access it by creating
distributable electronic copies. With the proposals here, we'd be taking
something that's already available to everyone electronically and
etching it onto metal plates, engraving in stone, etc. and presumably
locking it in a bomb shelter somewhere, so the benefits/costs aren't the
same.

-- 
Alex (wikipedia:en:User:Mr.Z-man)