> and if someone -- including the Internet Archive! -- reproduces it without your permission, you are legally entitled to ask them to stop. The Internet Archive won't even make you involve a lawyer.
That's right.
And this is important, because the Archive, like everyone else, is subject to copyright law. What Quora is asking for is something more: an API that allows them to go in, without any sort of human process or judgment, and sync up the Archive's records with what Quora wants those records to be. That's much different, and much worse.
Hey, I'm the random guy that asked you to answer on Quora. How I found you isn't very mysterious, I just asked all the folks listed here: http://18f.gsa.gov if I could easily identify a Quora profile.
I asked because a friend of mine recently joined 18F, I like what your team is doing, so I created the question as an attempt to get more attention for you guys. Just consider the resulting page a form of advertising ephemera. Sites on the Internet should aspire to be more, but Quora doesn't.
> Hey, I'm the random guy that asked you to answer on Quora. How I found you isn't very mysterious, I just asked all the folks listed here: http://18f.gsa.gov if I could easily identify a Quora profile.
And hopefully it's clear in my post that I'm really glad you did! :) It really is a good artifact -- which is exactly why I get so mad that it's not being preserved the way it should be.
You are just being an exploitative bully. Why should the Archive get to decide how every other website on the internet works? When people post on Quora they can also post somewhere that does get indexed by the Archive. Or they can keep it private to Quora.
> What Quora is asking for is something more: an API that allows them to go in, without any sort of human process or judgment, and sync up the Archive's records with what Quora wants those records to be
Does anyone else realize the self entitlement in your post? That which you so adamantly oppose giving to Quora is exactly what you desire from them: an API that allows the Archive to go in, without any sort of human process or judgement, and sync up the Archive's records with what the Archive wants those records to be.
There's nothing in the parent comment that seems unreasonable to me. You're putting a spin on it that doesn't exist.
The content of Quora today is what it is. The Internet Archive has no agenda for misrepresenting the content of any site. They don't want "records to be" anything other than what is reality now, tomorrow and the in the future.
The Archive's stance is perfectly reasonable. You can't arbitrarily go back in time and remove content that existed at the time, otherwise it's not a historical record.
So you can opt-out totally or be included in the archive's records, it's that simple.
> You can't arbitrarily go back in time and remove content that existed at the time, otherwise it's not a historical record.
With all due respect, the previous line is just your opinion. Court transcripts and other historical records get redacted all the time.
The Archive's stance might be reasonable, but so is Quora's. I object to the idea that Quora is "selfish" for letting people control their own content. Read that guy's original post:
> What Quora is asking for from the Internet Archive — and really, since the Archive has no public competition, from the Internet — is unreasonable, short-sighted, and selfish. Quora is simply being a shark about "their" content, at the public's expense.
The post is nothing more than an attempt to shame Quora into opening up their data. There are many people that don't want everything they post on the internet going into permanent and searchable databases.
> The post is nothing more than an attempt to shame Quora into opening up their data.
My post is definitely an attempt to shame Quora into opening up their data, in at least the sense of making it available to the Internet Archive. No bones there.
> There are many people that don't want everything they post on the internet going into permanent and searchable databases.
We may just disagree to some extent on what the norms should be, but I think if you're intentionally posting public content to a public website, that's part of the permanent public record. Especially when that website is about accumulating a knowledge base.
Wikipedia, another knowledge base, records everything. Though unlike Quora, you're allowed to contribute fully anonymously (without even registering an account -- in fact, come in through Tor, if you like). They have no problem allowing themselves to be backed up on the Archive, and I'd be pretty worried if they did.
There's some brief bot exclusions, a brief, now commented-out section asking the Internet Archive not to archive user pages, and then a very, very long section blocking various pages from being indexed by anyone. That long section has a lot of thought and history in it, including notes about the Internet's memory about users, like "Folks get annoyed when XfD discussions end up the number 1 google hit for their name."
I think it's totally fair to argue with Wikipedia about the choices it makes in its robots.txt, but ultimately what we're talking about here are organizations making these choices on behalf of users, not the individual users themselves.
If individuals are concerned about their contributions being preserved, that should be something they take up with the Archive. The Archive respects take down requests, both because copyright is a thing and because they're not interested in harming individuals.
I don't think we're working in the service of humanity by blessing companies that gate the future's access to massive troves of knowledge that was freely contributed to public websites.
That's right.
And this is important, because the Archive, like everyone else, is subject to copyright law. What Quora is asking for is something more: an API that allows them to go in, without any sort of human process or judgment, and sync up the Archive's records with what Quora wants those records to be. That's much different, and much worse.