Would you like access to the VF Forum in the Internet Archives?

[Lianne]

The Internet Archive is a website that captures web pages from throughout the history of the internet. It is often possible to find pages there that do not exist live on the internet anymore. I use it a lot in my job as a teacher-librarian and I have often used it personally, as well, sometimes to dig up things I posted on VF that are no longer available on the VF site itself (Wendy can only archive so much).

The last time I tried to do this, though, I discovered that the forum was no longer available in the Internet Archive because Wendy had diasbled the crawlers necessary for the Internet Archive to perform this function. I questioned her about it and she gave her reasons in this thread.

I could not find any discussion of this on the forum, and I personally would like to have this site crawled so we can have access to the archives. Since this forum is public anyway, I don't understand the desire to keep it from the webcrawlers.

How do you feel?

[Elisa B.]

I think the issue was that people didn't like having their posts come up in google searches. Which I agree with. Yes, it's a public forum, in that anyone can come to the forum and read the posts, but they have to make the effort to do that.

[Lianne]

Can I ask you why you don't want posts coming up in Google searches?

I always found google a more efficient way to search the forum anyway. I wonder if this is my fault in the first place since I told some VFers that that is how I search the forum. Damn.

[Elisa B.]

I just don't love the idea of my VF posts coming up in some random google search by any old random person, or worse yet, someone I actually know. I mean, not that there is any shame in posting on VF and not that I behave badly here, or post anything particularly private or scandalous, and I know it's a public forum, and anyone can come here and read all my posts. But still.

I know there is no true privacy left in this world, but must every word we type on the internet be archived forever, and searchable by anyone and everyone? (I guess the librarians here would say yes, of course!).

Elisa

[Lianne]

The thing is, it wouldn't come up in some random search. Unless someone knew your exact user name and a phrase from your post, the chances of something you wrote popping up on Google are so remote as to almost be statistically nil. I know this from my own experience using Google to search VF. The VF forum does not have a high google ranking - so it isn't returning posts from here unless someone knows exactly what they're looking for. I think it's a shame to let fear and paranoia eliminate a good thing.

However, I see that I am far outnumbered on this, so I am wondering if Wendy would at least consider a 1 day moratorium so those of us interested in retrieving some stuff from the archive could get it. I would have done this before if there had been any advance warning that this was going to happen.

[Lianne]

Just for interest sake I just did the following search using Google:

"Elisa B." yoga videofitness

and I got results from your forum postings - so it appears that it isn't stopping Google, yet it is stopping the Internet Archive.

There are plenty of ways to keep forums private, and if privacy is needed than by all means do that. But if a forum is public, then to me it should be searchable.

[Elisa B.]

Originally Posted by Lianne

I think it's a shame to let fear and paranoia eliminate a good thing.

I think that's a little harsh.

Over the years, there's been a bit of a divide between people who see the forum primarily as an information source and those who see it primarily as a conversation. Thus we had the battle over whether it is necessary to do a search before asking a question.

I'm here for the conversation, not to write deathless prose that should be archived forever. Just like when I sit in a coffee shop with a friend, having a conversation, I don't feel the need to make a podcast and put it on the internet.

Honestly, it's not a huge issue to me, I was just expressing a preference. It's not something I would leave the forum over. If I was really paranoid, I don't think I'd use my real name here, or hang out with people I met here, on the scary internet.

Elisa

[Carol_is_fit]

It bothers me that I can currently Google my name and posts from various places come up in the search. It seems so intrusive. Yes ... I know it's a public forum, but we have so little privacy left in this world ... I'm with others on this. Keep this forum the way it is. No archives. Sometimes things are better left in the past.

Carol

[Sophie]

Although I do like searching for and finding stuff, generally speaking, I voted no for this particular forum. Mostly because I think that although there is a lot of useful information at VF, there's also a lot of personal information shared because of the back-and-forth conversational context.

I might feel differently about other forums and other internet communities, though.

I do like being able to search for my posts from within VF, I guess, mostly for reference, and to jar my sieve-like memory.

[hch]

I can see both sides, but I voted "yes" yesterday, if only to be a contrarian.

Obviously you don't need Internet Archive to archive--I wasn't even going to post until I read the way the conversation's been going into today.

- My own position is similar to Lianne's--not about the Internet Archive per se, though, but about archiving. [In this post, all general references to "archives" are VF-specific.] I'd like to see the archives preserved; I'd like to have the opportunity to see posts if I wanted to, even if they're old (does anyone keep old workout logs--or does anyone throw away old photos simply because they're old?). I'd see deleting old threads simply because they're old (or letting them fade into vapor) almost like wiping out history or letting it disappear.

- I also agree on the searching: here's to hoping that upcoming versions of the software have or are compatible with better search functions.

- I do appreciate that storage space is limited, and I do see that it's easier and less dicey to delete old check-ins wholesale than picking through them to see what's least worthy of saving , but I'd rather not see that happening either. Lots of Yoga Check-In history has simply disappeared, and with it lots of informative and interesting conversation. I've saved some of the old check-ins, but I don't agree entirely with

Originally Posted by KathAL79

If you find a thread that provides a lot of information or that you like, it's easy enough to print it out or save it in another program. I have a yoga challenge from last year saved in Word, for example.

because newbies don't have the same opportunity.

- Where am I on using the Internet Archive? At the risk of being unpopular, I wouldn't really mind, especially as I'm very private anyway and don't share information on publicly accessible boards, no matter how searchable they are. I can see why others would be uncomfortable, though, and I respect them, especially if they aren't opposed to the mere idea of keeping old posts archived and searchable within VF.

(No, a thousand times no, I don't want to restrict VF reading access to registered members only without some extremely good reason.)