More on manuals plus rescue

[Mark J. Blair]

> On Aug 18, 2015, at 09:08 , Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> wrote:
> Jason and IA are deliberately working to redirect all search
> traffic to IA from the original mirrors by constantly creating useless 'new' content that
> Google thinks is real.

I'm rather skeptical of that claim.

> I have watched over time as the volume of Google top search hits have migrated to IA hosted
> content from the mirrors.

So what? The information is still available at Bitsavers, and now it's also available on additional sites, too. Who cares what comes up higher on a third party's search engine? Search engine optimization is important to people trying to maximize traffic to their site because they make money off of it, but it's not relevant to a nonprofit preservation effort. And mirroring of the content is important from a fault tolerance standpoint. What happens to the contents of Bitsavers if you get hit by a meteor and thus no longer maintain it? And what of all of the things that Jason archives and makes publicly, freely available that aren't on Bitsavers and are unlikely to end up there because they're outside your areas of interest?

There are things for which my site comes up at or near the top of searches. And if something else comes along that displaces it, I'm unlikely to care. My site will still be there as long as I am willing and able to maintain it.

I think that Bitsavers and IA are both great things. I use both, love both, and consider both of them to be great resources, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. I don't see any grounds for hostility between supporters of either of them.

-- 
Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net/