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Archive Team Is Busy Saving Geocities
jamie found this note from Jason Scott, who organizes the Archive Team. They are busy downloading as much of Geocities as they can before it vanishes from the Net after Yahoo pulled the plug. (Note: that textfiles.com link is a good candidate for Readability.) "..after 48 hours of work, Archive Team has saved over 200,000 Geocities sites. We're now pulling in new sites at the rate of something like 5 a second. Is that fast enough? We'll see, won't we. ... A side-effect of the whole process is I now know way, way, way too much [sic] about Geocities than I ever expected to. We've had to dissect every aspect of how the site functions to understand how to mirror things, from its history through how it does crazy javascript ads. Some of it is stupid and some is hilarious... We think we have most every site from 1999 and before on Geocities that was left. ... It is more important to me to grab the data than to figure out how to serve it later. People who have been talking about copyright and stuff seem to think I'm going to sell it or take credit or some crap. I don't see how the final collection won't end up online, but how is elusive — maybe a torrent of a bunch of zip files, or as a curated collection, or as a bunch of hard drives. However it is, I'll make sure people can get it, somehow."
to surround it all by a blink tag
Always avoid
"Hegelians, who love a synthesis, will probably conclude that he wears a wig." - Bertrand Russell
With Google losing half a billion a year, how long until they pull the plug on Youtube? I guess it could turn a profit, but when? My guess is the next downturn will cause shareholder pressure to force their hand.
I lost the password to my Geocities page 10 years ago. Think you might be able to find it?
I can see the fnords!
Yes, future generations must know about the horrors visited upon us by the millions of tubgirl and lolcats clones which populated Geocities. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
They'll be broke in only 40 years.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Right when you think it's dead, they find a way to keep it alive!
I could find my site from ages ago... and find all the fun crap people have posted to geocities.
Isn't anybody going to move a finger, while a significant part of our collective history disappears forever?
I really don't think anyone should be allowed to simply pull the plug, no matter what TOS say.
If I buy the Colosseum and then decide to blow it up "because it's mine", I bet I'd be stopped by someone, rightly so.
As a historian of year 2075, I'd really want to have access to Geocities if I am researching the '90s.
It happened at least once before. In the 50's and early 60's, video storage technology was expensive, and most video documentation was not not considered to be of any 'historical value'. As a result, most of it was just erased and we have lost forever an incredible source of information on that period.
Is there a productive way to scream? A petition of some kind? An attorney to be addressed?
"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." (Oscar Wilde)
Did you try hunter2?
This is just ridiculous the amount of work they have to go through to half ass archive geocities. Why can't yahoo just hand over a stack of hard drives to archive.org or someone?
Perhaps the archive.org folks would like to preserve this too.
I want to make sure that any geocities site I may have been affiliated with back in my formative years is not seen by anyone who might recognize me now.
Who do I make the check out to, and how many significant places will be required?
You could have explained that (tubgirl==shockSite).
Why not just ask yahoo for an image of the site. They are going to shut it down anyway. So what value is a load of crappy web pages to them. They may be glad to send it rather than have a load of random web trawlers going over there entire web site.
There was an awesome amount of amateur research on Geocities. Some of my favorite reference sites are therefore just about toast (most of them containing first-hand military history).
And just because someone asked, I saved all ~300 of my Youtube favorites to my HDD last weekend, when I realized how much I rely on them for my own hobby research projects, teaching classes, etc. Most of it was stuff that will never be on DVD. Some of it is stuff that the owners have *already* deleted in the last week, due to perfectionism or whatever.
I was a Boy Scout, and relying on some free service without thinking of contingencies just doesn't make sense.
I made a 4 or more GeoCities sites. 3 of them are useless, because I never got very far with them.
Is there a way to let them know which sites are not meaningful? In time, I could back up my other site, and then it would be useless.
Isn't this already taken care of by things like google cache or the internet wayback machine?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
because someone is sure to sue them for copyright infringement.
and made in 1999
in college
sad to see it go
Ironically enough, I had moved past the article in question to read the article about Jason's bandwidth being overwhelmed by myspace layout providers referencing an image on textfiles.com; I clicked on the next article and... down to to either "maintenance or capacity problems". 8^/
They have not seen archiving geocities.com since 2002. Before then they have less than 25,000 pages saved:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://geocities.com
The first web page I ever created (never finished though) was on Geocities, what's left is here http://www.geocities.com/brad1138/ but it is disappearing fast. Had pictures of kids and family etc.... I always wondered how long it would last, over 10 years isn't bad I guess.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
They'll probably be followed by Blogspot and the likes, in a not too distant future.
...to rhyme with 'atrocities' ?
I hope they save my site about the Cramps that I made back in '98, it took me hours.
Nobody can guarantee what's going to happen tomorrow, not even an admiral from the future.
It may still take you years to understand the backups, but at least you'll have the full data for posterity.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
I'm Suing the archival guys for copy right infringement!!! How dare they copy my abandoned hello kitty tribute site with out my permission!!!
I posted earlier about how Geocities was the early web 2.0 in practice, where anybody could post anything and contribute to the community. I'm sure that there is a wealth of information on geocities about obscure topics that *Might* come in handy if you were to let your true inner geek reign supreme. I.E. I have bios roms of early mac's that I found on Geocities sites that couldn't be found anywhere else, and I'm sure that if they were posted nowadays, they would be subject to lawsuits or take-down notices by Apple.
I think that our generation will leave less of a mark than that which came before it because nobody is writing on paper. Geocities is the closest thing that we have to shoe-boxes full of letters and diaries for the period spanning the late 90's (In the form of websites about star trek and software and pointless articles posted by ambitious young proto-webdesigners). In the future, there will be a similar scramble to preserve facebook and myspace to preserve correspondence for future generations.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
Angelfire was fun to snoop around on, since the image subdirectories were open for the browsing. Sometimes you found images not meant for the public.
What was that password? When you typed hunter2, all I saw was *******.
Be relentless!
"you can go hunter2 my hunter2-ing hunter2" http://www.bash.org/?244321
Real men read Slashdot articles at -1, bottom up.
Here is just one example of content on Geocities that has value.
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/8682/
These old documents are still of value to people modding the old games.
Back in 1997 or so, my very first site was hosted on GeoCites, uploaded via 14.4 modem. I wish I had kept it up, for nostalgic reference. The URL alone was hilarious, you know, that /OuterSpace/Asteroids/7382/ kind of thing, before subdomains became popular.
Funny, but true. I did forget my login information (email/username and password) to this site, which is just the one image.
For those who don't know, this is a parody of Chick religious tracts (God, what a waste of a domain name!) that has often been the target of the Chick lawyers.
Note to the Chick legal team: I'll be glad to take it down if you give me my password! :)
Dark Reflection
Back in 1996-97 I made an extremely amateurish geocities site with some unfinished programming tutorials, the most popular of which was on qbasic. I sort of stopped working on it after a while, lost my password, and couldn't get yahoo to authenticate me years later when I wanted to remove my ridiculous site. The bio page is especially embarrassing, and the programming material that is there is of no use today. Honestly I'm too lazy to expend any more energy in my effort to shut down my site, so naturally I am relieved to see yahoo pulling the plug on geocities. The way I see it, the internet is cleaner without my site clogging the tubes. My site could live indefinitely in archiving systems, but hopefully someday it won't even show up on a search for "qbasic programming". Will the web naturally garbage collect my orphaned web page, without my intervention?
Welcome back to 1999
wbs.net
best chat site evar.
abc/disney/go network can burn. burn and diaf.
i especially missed the 'girl chat' room. so many dudes pretending to be chicks and sharing the pixellated pr0n.
oh well, at least we still have IRC and 4chan. (congrats m00t!)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
n/t
This site has been of enormous value to me and friends who are also soy intolerant and/or allergic to soy:
http://www.geocities.com/hotsprings/4620/decoder.htm
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Value to whom and for what? This stuff is of historical importance just as much as the diaries of people in the previous decades is to historians. Why not preserve it?
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
... end up online, but how is elusive."
Maybe you can call it, I dunno, something like ... "Groups."
with that site gone, how will people ever know that soy beverages, soy cheese, soy flour, soy meal, soy oil, soy sauce, soy protein, and soybeans ALL CONTAIN SOY PRODUCTS?
i know it's not all of them, but seriously - damn near half of the products on that page have SOY in the name. i can only deduce that geocities hates natural selection.
the united states is a nation of laws; badly written and randomly enforced -- frank zappa
... It's a smelly business being programmer these days ...
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
There are some important documents about Mr. T, Chewbacca and testicle consumption that would be a shame to lose.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I still use the old comment system. By default I browse Threaded, Highest Scores First, +2 or above, karma and subscriber bonus off. If I want more to read, I'll knock it to +1. If I want to read replies to one particular comment, I open it in a new tab and they're all laid out below it.
With the new system, it doesn't rank highest first, there's no one-click way to show more... just a vague dragbox.
I spent years building that little site full of goodies for scientific document preparation. I kept it on geocities so it would have a permanent home. It is the number one site for several google searches. No @#$%in blink tags. HTML 4.01 strict compliant. Haven't updated it for a few years but still get over a thousand views a month.
It angers me when smarmy elitists dismiss Geocities out of hand. I for one am glad someone wants to archive my page. I needed a free, stable web hosting site. Geocities did that. Now there is no other option.
My geocities site was my first Hand coded web page )
lucky i already had it backed up.
Course now i have to find another place to host my Drumming class handouts.
of course the Bad thing about Yahoo buying geocities was the spam i recived when up 1000% over night since they would mail to the geocities adress and it was Automaticly forwared to my yahoo.
I had to end up stoping useing the email adress i had since yahoo first started offering acounts
I still get 200+ spam message a day there threw there loasy spam filter
Emyrs
Yet again we see the Cult of Save Everything trumpeted in the media as if they are the ultimate force for good in the world. Get a grip, the plug was pulled because it wasn't popular enough to warrant keeping. Now that it's stuck on some hard drive somewhere who do you think is going to go and dig it out and look at any of it. At best it will last one generation and then get thrown away by his grandchildren.
I completely agree with the idea that we should preserve quality works of our and previous generations so that generations to come can enjoy them but we just seem to be trying to archive everything. How will future generations know what drove and inspired us?
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
By that argument we should try to preserve every piece of media we ever produce in any format no matter what quality it is. Can you imagine the situation if that were the case? What if every civilization for 6000 years before us had preserved everything they had written? Sure we would know a lot more about them but we would have so much material we would never be able to sift through it and preserving it all would probably consume damn near all our resources. Further more we would probably struggle to determine what the people of the time found important and what drove them.
It is better, I feel, to let history filter the material. If it really is worth keeping someone will keep it and it will stand the test of time. If it doesn't get preserved then obviously it wasn't important enough to anyone to preserve.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Awesome, thanks for that link! I had no idea that a new version of Mix Manager was out. According to the page, it no longer crashes "on fast computers (Pentium II or faster)". Sweet!
The new moderation system is broken. I've twice had 15 mod points in the last couple of weeks but the "Moderate" button just won't show. I even tried temporarily allowing all the javascript on the page to run (yes I run NoScript) but I refresh the page and still no "moderate" button appears.
So I loaded the page in IE and there was the button. Whatever's going on it simply doesn't work for me in Firefox.
But if you think I'm running IE or removing NoScript just so I can moderate on Slashdot think again !
Sure we would know a lot more about them but we would have so much material we would never be able to sift through it and preserving it all would probably consume damn near all our resources. Further more we would probably struggle to determine what the people of the time found important and what drove them.
If there only was some kind of program that could sift through billions of documents and automatically index them and rank them according to relative importance. Some kind of searcher. Too bad nothing like that exist.
Dude, you guys know about way back machine, right? It's at http://www.archive.org/index.php . Do yourself a favor, delete all that crap from geocities. Sort of like trying to save all of my (or someone elses) 4th grade school papers. Who cares?
Wow, this used to pass as a non-destructive non-dumb idea?
I run my browser on a personal computer, which displays web pages in a resizable windows. If text is too narrow, I can widen it. If it's too wide, I can shrink it. It even lets me change font sizes, so if text is too big or too small, I can effortless fix that too.
Use that 'readability' thing, and stuff instantly becomes less readable. Now you get to pick from 1 of 4 widths instead of one of the hundreds (over a thousand, actually) widths that I can size a window to. If I pick the best fit and then size my window, oh look: a horizontal scroll bar! The only way you could make it harder to use, would be to make it blink too.
And back in the mid 1990s they called this "readability?!" I assume they did it as a joke on all the poor shmucks who were stuck with Mosaic for MS Windows.
Don't bother, Goecities is a collection of a bunch of garbage that it useless. Let it go away please!
My old Tripod password was hkyxxt, but they deleted my account about 10 years ago :-(
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
Right after I tried 12345!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Based on my memories of visiting various Geocities web sites, perhaps the "Web Pages That Suck" site could offer them as downloadable examples of how not to design web pages.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Unfortunately, I have to strongly disagree with you. The future importance of Geo Cities cannot be discounted. One of the most prized finds in archaeology is the ancient human garbage dump... Geo Cities is the largest garbage dump of our generation!! The reason for this is because the knowledge behind many historical items of significance DOESN'T EXIST ANYMORE!!!
Researching even the detritus of Geo Cities would provide a great deal of insight into our culture to those researching it hundreds of years from now. Given the difficulties our civilization has had in researching the construction of the pyramids, Stone Henge, and the Mayan calendar, no reasonable person should be okay with destroying our history... even if it is "garbage." These instances, and many others, demonstrate the vast quantities of knowledge that have been lost throughout the ages. The sad part is that it probably derived from the people of that time having an attitude similar to yours.
As a result, we have people producing documentaries on the History Channel proclaiming ALIENS had to help build the Pyramids and create the Mayan calendar.. because, you know, humans back then had to be too stupid and simple to do it themselves. Heck, we cannot even recover some knowledge from the 1960's and 70's because of our blatant disregard of the potential need for the information in the future!!! Perhaps you may not care, but I would prefer people knowing how we built the Hoover Damn or developed atomic energy. It would be highly insulting for future generations to have create a hypothesis about alien life allowing us to build our great achievements because your attitude resulted in the information being destroyed.
In short, I'd rather future civilizations know too much about us rather than too little.
Yeah, I know what you mean. Their historical worth probably is no better than the worth of a public announcement about a tax reduction written in three languages.
*cough*Rosetta stone*cough*
It is generally quite difficult to know the historical value of something in advance. And just because something is not well known does not mean it does not have historical value, either.
I'll grant you have more hard drive space, but "storage" itself of digital information has been around for a long, long time --- for one, in the "aperiodic crystals" that store the blueprints for our own bodies: DNA. For example, the DNA in a human cell contains about one CD ROM worth of quaternary digital storage. Your body contains somewhere from 10-100 trillion cells, so assuming you are human, you yourself embody at least a zettabyte of digital, chemical information storage.
$META_SIG_JOKE
That's the stupidest password I've ever heard of in my life! That's the kinda thing an idiot would have on his luggage!
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Geocities is near and dear to me. It's how I made millions of neopoints by phishing neopets kids.
yeah the ones with "soy" in the name are obvious. It's the other half that is so insidious.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
So what, is Geocities Sodom now?
Although I knew about Slashdot years ago, I always just used to click straight through to the article. I only started reading the comments when the AJAX interface appeared; before that I just couldn't hack the number of clicks, especially of the back button, required to navigate them.
Why not just ask yahoo to hand over the disk to way back machine organisation????? Much much faster than miroring.
Let there be light, three cheers to the Internet