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

[Mark Wagner]

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 08:29, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> However, most information isn't lost because of disaster, it is lost
> because people don't think they need it any more and delete/destroy
> it. Can we trust whoever is around in the future to continue to
> preserve the history dumps they've backed up?

You seem to be stuck in the "expensive copies" mindset of data
preservation: since making copies is difficult, it makes sense to be
concerned about who will have custody of those copies, and how they
will go about guarding them.

But making copies of Wikipedia *isn't* difficult: it costs 39 cents to
make a copy of Enwiki's current article text on a hard drive, or 68
cents to burn it to a dual-layer DVD.  Instead of making a single
copy, protecting it from every conceivable harm, entrusting it to a
guardian, and hoping he doesn't get bored with the task, make millions
copies and spread them around the world.  Most of these will be lost
or destroyed, but the sheer number ensures that some will wind up in
the hands of people who are interested in preserving them.

-- 
Mark
[[en:user:Carnildo]]