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

[Anthony]

On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 5:17 AM, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 12:16 AM, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
> >
> > I wouldn't go quite that far. The idea of doing it (or having done it)
> > makes people feel good, due to the collective sci-fi-like fantasy
> > implicitly promulgated by the project itself -- a future world of
> > poverty and decay, saved by the serendipitous discovery of a
> > time-capsule sent from the past. It's a spectacle, a stunt, and it has
> > PR value.
>
> Producing long-lived snapshots of important projects, and preserving
> them for posterity, is more than a feel-good effort -- it is good
> practice.


Why?

On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 12:16 AM, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org>wrote:
>
> I wouldn't go quite that far. The idea of doing it (or having done it)
> makes people feel good, due to the collective sci-fi-like fantasy
> implicitly promulgated by the project itself -- a future world of
> poverty and decay, saved by the serendipitous discovery of a
> time-capsule sent from the past.


I'd say that story is completely unrealistic, among other problems.  If the
people of the future world of poverty and decay want to learn, they'll
learn.  If they don't want to learn, they'll burn the discoverer of the
time-capsule at the stake and then destroy the time-capsule along with it -
or worse, they'll misapply the knowledge contained in the capsule and use it
for their own evil purposes.  Thomas Dalton talks about dark ages in
history, but in each of these dark ages there were individuals who had far
greater knowledge than most of the rest of the world, and simply possessing
that knowledge didn't manage to save the world, not for a long time.  I'd
write the ending of your sci-fi-like fantasy novel as a tragedy - a
Cassandra-like figure who discovers the capsule and possess all the
knowledge in the world, but is doomed to watch the world destroy itself
because no one will listen.  "I see disaster. I see catastrophe. Worse, I
see lawyers!" (and Pokemon characters!  and Encyclopedia Dramatica!)

If you're going to engage in this fantasy, it might be better if the time
capsule is intentionally made difficult to read.  Then at least it'd only be
usable by a society that is ready to find it.  But personally, I think there
are much more important things to do - things that help us here in our own
world, during our own lifetimes.

Quote from Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite, cribbed from Wikipedia article
"Cassandra".