16
votes
Should Tildes archive links submitted to it?
We would most likely use a service like archive.org for it but I'm not sure if we should so before making an issue, I thought I'd ask for opinions.
It'd be useful to make sure old topics don't become obsolete but it could also be undesirable behaviour for privacy reasons.
I won't implement something like this. It's almost never needed, and in the very rare cases where it is, you can easily just go to your archive service of choice directly and paste the url.
It also has the potential to cause legal issues for Tildes, since it's questionable whether circumventing paywalls is a violation of Canadian copyright law, and these archiving services usually do that.
What would you think of pinging archive.org with the URL upon submission at the very least, to ensure there is an archived copy? (Even if we don't show it on tildes)
Is that something they encourage and have an API or other mechanism for?
They have this but there doesn't seem to be an API for submissions that is documented.
Ah, I may have been confusing it with another archiving system… I'll ask around.
Old thread, I know, but this has now been implemented. Just ping this URL:
http://web.archive.org/save/<insert URL you want to save>Seems to do the job. I ran this page through it, and your five minute old comment was captured.
https://web.archive.org/web/20191019194620/https://tildes.net/~tildes/dxf/should_tildes_archive_links_submitted_to_it
So, if a news site removes an article or a blogger deletes a blog page on their respective websites, we'll keep a permanent copy here on Tildes?
That would contradict the spirit of Tildes' own privacy policy:
While that policy is talking about content on Tildes, the intent is clear: Tildes will not store data if someone wants that data deleted. Why would we not extend the same courtesy to writers on other websites? If they want their content deleted, what right do we have to store that data without their knowledge or permission?
Well, we wouldn't be storing that data ourselves, it'd be a third-party which can do so even without Tildes' existence, we'd simply be automating it.
This feature is wanted for archival purposes and so topics based on links don't become meaningless. Furthermore, it's not always a case of people wanting to delete their data - it's mostly times changing, the website changes their link system, the website goes down, etc.
Edit : Thought I'd add that we already embed Twitter conversations so it actually wouldn't be a new precedent.
Outsourcing this to someone else, so our own hands are clean, doesn't make it right.
Using this logic, we should not have a delete feature here on Tildes. You shouldn't ever be able to delete your comments on Tildes because we want them for archival purposes and so discussions based on your comments don't become meaningless.
How would we distinguish between the case where a URL no longer works because it was changed and because the page was deleted? (If that even matters.)
That wasn't my point, the point was that this service is known to do that and many people use it for that regardless of if Tildes uses it, if they wanna delete it, they can ask them for it.
Deleted comments are annoying but they're not as essentials as the topics themselves. Sure, the users should have that right but most often than not, websites are already being archived this way. Sure, we might want to "lead" but the truth is that something as small as Tildes really doesn't make a difference.
Well, assuming we do it on submission, it wouldn't matter, no.
Well, I'm thinking if someone links to one of their personal blogs or something of the like. I don't have a lot of ideas for privacy reason for why it might be unwanted but it's something that I think could bother people perhaps.
I personally would not want that. Part of being privacy focus means implementing features that protect user’s data (even pseudo anonymous data like links posted under a username, and discussions under those links) proactively, and not as an opt-in feature. If a day came where I decided I no longer wanted to use tildes, or more likely I slowly but surely stopped using the site daily, my data shouldn’t by default be permanently sitting there until I come back and delete it. There are many forums out there that have old comments and links of mine, often generating discussions that no longer reflect my current views, and unless I go in and delete them (when possible) they will continue sitting there until the servers come home. Of course I could do that, and perhaps should, but it would be nice if Tildes took the extra step (or indeed, did not take the step as archiving would be an active effort) of deleting user data like this after a certain amount of time.
Of course, it makes sense to archive conversations and links for some period of time. Most sites Tilde’s size wouldn’t work if conversations couldn’t be carried out over the course of days. But I do believe that user privacy would best be maintained by not storing inactive conversations after a predefined period of inactivity. This could have the effect of deleting insightful discussions that users may like to come back to, but in my view this is an appropriate trade off for ensuring good privacy practices.
Forgetful sites are friendly sites.
It seems I badly misread OP, so thank you for pointing this out. My comment might appropriately be labeled off topic, but I’ll leave it up in case anyone had similar misunderstandings.
You're talking about something very different from the suggestion that was being made, but I'm concerned that you seem to be expecting Tildes to automatically delete old posts, which it doesn't do (and I have no intention to make it do that).
If you delete your posts I fully remove them from the database after 30 days, but it's not something that happens automatically. We've talked about some vaguely similar plans, like locking the voting on posts after a while and removing all the records of who voted on it at that point (while keeping the total count), but never anything like deleting actual posts. This isn't intended to be an ephemeral site, and a lot of the planned and requested features are related to making it easier to find old posts (search functions and so on).
Well it seems I badly misread the OP, so point taken.
In any case I have no expectation that Tildes shape itself to my wants and needs :). The above was just an idea of my preferences. I am very impressed with Tildes focus on privacy this far, and completely understand that my hypothetical forgetful site is counter to the aims of what we have here.
In any case, I’ll leave my comment up despite the bad misreading of OP.
Personally, I find value in Tildes as a way to discuss current things. If a page gets deleted, its value is gone for me. I'd rather Tildes just not archive the links since it's weird talking about a page that doesn't exist anymore.