web archive & listproc help (was: Collecting computers - the book... - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

3 Feb 1999

Upon the date 09:42 AM 2/3/99 -0800, Kevan Heydon said something like:
...

As the creator of the web archive I feel I should reply...

On Wed, 3 Feb 1999, Hans Franke wrote:

 Me_Too(TM) don't feel comfortable with a _public_ archive of this 
If other people are of the same opinion then I will take down the web
archives.  
Kevin, isn't there a way to completely hide this archive from any search
engine? I'm no web weenie so others here who are should jump in and answer. 

Links that ClassicCmp folks put on their pages to the archive do, of
course, blow the cover. What if we just have an unannounced or "secret" URL
for the archive? List members could be given it and a note placed
prominently on each archive page stating this is priviledged information
and not to be publicly released because of unprotected email addresses or
something. List members will just have to write the "secret" URL on a
Post-it note and place it on their computer or tack board. Passing of it to
new members or those of us who have lost the addr. would be given it only
by private email.

Well, it's just an idea. 

This list is, in my opinion, a very significant source of technical and
anecdotal infomation about our old machines the likes of which probably
could never be found elsewhere. I've learned so _very, very_ much from many
of you since 10 December, 1997 when I joined. Witness the recent IBM 1130
thread. We found more info relating to them and a working system in
Germany! I've got DEC gear in my collection which several have been helping
me on it. I really hope I helped a few of you too.

It's been discussed here before, and again I'll state that it's a pet
peeve, that some really important tidbits of info on our classics is not
found by any search engine that I know of. So there seems to be some way
the pages are hidden. In this case of securing our ClassicCmp archive's
privacy, the pet peeve is hereby released :-)

I can always use the 170MB (and now growing at a rate of about
...
 12MB a month) of disk space they take at the moment.
Instead of cluttering
the list send mail to me directly at kevan(a)heydon.org and I will count the
votes. 
I'll send you a vote privately but I do want to say the archive is a very
important resource (flame wars and very off topic junk excepted of course).
I think nearly all of us feel access to it is needed no matter where it is
kept. The U. of Washington archive site is not available since haliotis is
shut down. 

...
   list. I
considere this more privat - and for the pe(a)rls in here,
 I made up two archives (_on_my_hard_disk_) - one where every pice
 is stored, and one where I put the very genuine things.  So I have
 any possible search option (fast and local) and privacy (i hope). 
I also tend to keep post that I think will be usefull (which happens to be
most of Tony Duells posts) in a mail folder. I have also been keeping
entire threads with a thought to extracting the pearls of wisdom into web
pages.

It is much less work to archive the entire list than it is to manually
extract particular bits of information. It is also easy to let the major
search engines trawl the list archive to allow searching.

Regards,  Chris
-- --
Christian Fandt,         Electronic/Electrical Historian
Jamestown, NY  USA      cfandt(a)netsync.net
Member of Antique Wireless Association
        URL: http://www.ggw.org/freenet/a/awa/