[LINK] Pandora?

Michael Still mikal at stillhq.com
Thu Dec 28 12:38:22 AEDT 2006


Adam Todd wrote:
> At 08:07 AM 28/12/2006, Michael Still wrote:
>> Eric Scheid wrote:
>>
>>> no idea if the sitemaps protocol is supported by Pandora yet.
>>
>> Isn't it irrelevant? Pandora claim to be a "selective index" (the 
>> usefulness of such a thing seems low to me, but anyway), and probably 
>> wouldn't include anything new.
>>
>> http://pandora.nla.gov.au/selectionguidelinesallpartners.html
> 
> Pandora is a great resource.  Not every web site on the Internet that 
> holds Australian Public interest gets fully archives elsewhere.

Sure. In that case though they should do it properly and do all sights. 
Or partner with someone who can if they can't.

> The Internet Archive Project is probably one of the few resources that 
> tries hard with limited resources to do such.
> 
> If you have a web site that has a level of public interest, or future 
> historic  value or even a site that has information that may one day 
> vanish - say when you move house and turn off your server, then Pandora 
> is a place you can approach if they haven't already approached you, to 
> at least ensure that something of the fastest vanishing records in 
> history might be preserved.

I asked to be included. I was. Then they dropped me without warning. 
They're also flawed in that their definition of "Australian content" 
ignores (last time I checked):

  - content hosted outside of Australia
  - content on a non-.au domain

There are _lots_ of Australians who host overseas and who don't use a 
.au domain, in both cases because the costs of doing it locally are 
disproportionally high.

Why not use whois data for such an index? Why not let people opt in?

> I'm sure as time passes, the NLA will find ways to add more resources 
> and storage to the archive facility and increase and broaden the storage.

Until Pandora is a complete archive of all "Australian" content (for 
some workable definition), it will be largely useless. Worse, it 
encourages others to make assumptions based on bad input data...

> I'd like to think that Pandora archives all the Political web sites for 
> each of those Running Candidates that flings so much crude on their 
> websites that never gets printed in a news paper.  Those things can come 
> back to bite later :)
> 
> Be nice if Pandora could also archive all School based web sites.  They 
> change so often that history and commendations vanish from the eyes of 
> the world as fast as they are created.
> 
> Everyone deserves to be noted.  Time Magazine proved that!

Ok, so then they should do that.

Mikal



More information about the Link mailing list