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Web Pages Are Weak Links in the Chain of Knowledge

Posted by Hemos on from the destroying-our-young dept.

PizzaFace writes "Contributions to science, law, and other scholarly fields rely for their authority on citations to earlier publications. The ease of publishing on the web has made it an explosively popular medium, and web pages are increasingly cited as authorities in other publications. But easy come, easy go: web pages often get moved or removed, and publications that cite them lose their authorities. The Washington Post reports on the loss of knowledge in ephemeral web pages, which a medical researcher compares to the burning of ancient Alexandria's library. As the board chairman of the Internet Archive says, "The average lifespan of a Web page today is 100 days. This is no way to run a culture.""

8 of 361 comments (clear)

  1. Well, by jeffkjo1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Really, is there a reason to archive everything in the world? Sure, your 4 year old has some pretty drawings, but should they be put in a library someplace?

    100 years from now, should anyone be forced to accidentally stumble over goatse? (which is very disturbingly archived on archive.org)

    1. Re:Well, by mlush · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Sure, your 4 year old has some pretty drawings, but should they be put in a library someplace?

      I would be fascinated to see my Great Grandad's first drawings, his school web page, his postings to USENET. I only knew him as on old man ....

      To a historian often the most interesting stuff is the ephemera, the diary of an ordanary person gives a view of every day life you will never get looking at 'formal' archives (ie newspaper, film librarys etc etc) which only covers 'important' stuff

  2. Books have an ISBN... by Advocadus+Diaboli · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...which means that with that ISBN I can refer to the book and find it at libraries or bookstores. Why don't we setup a sort of unique web page number if articles of interest or knowledge are published there. Then it would be easy to track an article if its moved to another site or whatever just by looking up a sort of catalog for these numbers.

  3. Reliability by lukewarmfusion · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's not just the short lifespan of a webpage... it's also the fact that the source isn't always reliable. Web publications are rarely given the same strict editorial process as most journal articles. The content might be just as good - or better - but they're also not given the same credibility.

    I'm a recent grad of a University... my freshman year, profs wanted us to start using the Internet more so we were asked to submit at least x number of references from Internet sources. By my senior year, they were trying to get us to stop using the Internet. Using a URL as a reference was sometimes forbidden by the professor.

  4. Re:Worst Record Keeping by robslimo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Ummm, maybe only as applies to this topic, which is to say that web pages are a poor place to keep records.

    I'd contend that researchers & scientists in general would be quite silly to site an electronic-only resource in their publications, because the persistence of that resource relies on too many factors (the whim of the webmaster, backups or lack thereof, fiber seeking and grid seeking backhoes, etc).

    I think that will all sort itself out and real scientists will continue or return to citing more traditional resources.

    What I think is much more disturbing and disruptive is the pseudo-science and mis-information that is overly abundant on the web. Too many web sites, personal and commercial, spout 'facts' in such great detail that they have the appearance of authority. Too often, novice/amatuer scientists can be seriously mis-lead by some of the crap that can be found on the web masquerading as 'science'.

  5. archive.org and copyright? by McDutchie · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I've started to keep archivied copies of webpages instead of links, the next time you want it it's gone. Unfortunatly you can't share them like links.
    If you can't share them, then how come archive.org can? How come archive.org seems to be above copyright law?
    1. Re:archive.org and copyright? by Jerf · · Score: 5, Interesting

      How come archive.org seems to be above copyright law?

      Archive.org invokes the DMCA safe harbor provisions (see bottom of that page for the DMCA boilerplate), which is described in Title II of the DMCA.

      However, you'll find a careful reading of the DMCA reveals that none of the exclusions really quite applies to them; a good lawyer might be able to get them protected but I would bet against them.

      Mostly they get by because they will remove content if requested, and nobody who cares cares quite enough to sue them on behalf of "the world" when they are satisfied to have their own content removed. In other words, they are basically OK because nobody cares to sue them. Strictly speaking, archive.org probably is the world's largest copyright violation.

      This goes to show that sometimes if you break the law in a big enough way, you can get away with it. ;-)

      (Not responsible for the results of any actions based on taking that sentence to heart. For entertainment purposes only. etc.)

  6. cant erase my usenet postings by peter303 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I started posting usenet in the late 1980s. These g*dd*mn things are still are still on the net. I was less guarded at that time. Everyone *knew* them becase disk space ws so scare that usenet postings would disappear in 7-14 days.