At 02:44 PM 10/17/00 -0400, Douglas Quebbeman wrote:
>Now, an unimagineable amount of message traffic, much of it
>having serious potential research use, is gone.
This site says the approximately 16 million postings from
October 1996 to late 1998 consumes 592 gigabytes:
http://www.archive.org/collections/index.html#Usenet
but of course earlier posts are much less space.
http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/index.html has May 1981-1982.
With 30 gig drives at less than $200...
- John
From Feb 11 2000 on this list:
Several times in the past I've ranted to this list about my hope
for a more ancient version of DejaNews, a web archive of old
Usenet posts. Below is an e-mail I received from someone who
has the start of an archive. He's searching for more volunteers
for the project. I think this would be a tremendous resource
for classic computer collectors and historians.
- John
To: John Foust <jfoust_at_threedee.com>
Subject: Re: Old usenet news?
From: Michael Stutz <stutz_at_dsl.org>
X-Mailer: MH-E (emacs20)
X-Url:
http://dsl.org/
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 13:16:57 -0500
Sender: m_at_dsl.org
Been thinking about a potential Usenet archive restoration project
lately, how such a project might work.
I don't think it's a one-man job -- too many people are probably going
to have different ideas on how to store it, availability, interface,
etc.
This is what I think needs to happen:
- there needs to be some kind of public discussion area for the
project (like a newsgroup or mailing list)
- a repository needs to be put in place, where people can send their
archives. any size would probably be good enough to begin with, even a
few gigs. hard drives are cheap now and it shouldn't be too difficult
for someone to be able to get at least 10gb, which i think should be
enough to at least begin assembling some of the old years, and
whatever misc. stuff from pre-95 that people have?
While I'm very interested in this, I don't have time to oversee or
coordinate it. (I assume that you don't, either?)
However, I've been assembling what notes I can -- URLs of known
archives, addresses of interested people, related threads. I've begun
putting all this together in html and plan on putting it on the web,
just to make a convergence point for likeminded individuals -- maybe
it might provide the impetus for someone else to begin such a project?
Or at least get the attention of someone who has a 20gb hard drive on
some ftp box at some university or organization somewhere, where some
of the old archives could begin to be reassembled? (I'd think such a
restoration project would make a great research project for someone,
maybe?)
As I think I mentioned before, I've got some archives from specific
groups, and a lot of old threads and even single articles saved. If there
was a coordinator and a system in place (even 1gb to start? or a box
with access to a cd-burner or some other removeable media?), I bet a
post to slashdot would draw in hundreds of people like me, or more,
with their old archives.
m
P.S. On a related note, I'd like to see an open-source replacement for
imdb.com happen, but again it's not a project I can take on right now.
Received on Tue Oct 17 2000 - 14:17:47 BST