Is it really that paramount to keep most of the web around? The obvious knee-jerk answer is that it’s a great resource about our history, but honestly, I would not care if most of the web simply perished the natural way. It’s only seldom that I use the Wayback Machine and if the content I’m looking for would not be there, it would be no big deal for me. Where is the point of storing too much information?
> It’s only seldom that I use the Wayback Machine and if the content I’m looking for would not be there, it would be no big deal for me.
Depends on what sorts of thing you and me look for on the web, I suppose then.
I use the Wayback Machine regularly, and what I need from it is usually quite valuable (to me), if I could not have found it anywhere else.
Only yesterday I was wandering along information about symmetry groups and tilings of the plane, so you come across the Geometry Junkyard[1] ... dead links all over the place as soon as you take more than a few steps! A lot of those are old university home pages, the ones with ~s in them. If the person doesn't work there anymore, they often rot, and the information doesn't always get transferred to the next site or blog. I know I'm guilty of the same, quite a few ancient old sites floating about that I never bothered collecting under one domain. I know the IA has got them though :)
