Re: Gopher Archives (zaibatsu), 10/30/2019
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Multiple people have responded[1..4] to solderpunk's
great post about archiving gopher content[5]. Here are a few
additional thoughts, and a brief experience or two:

- I'm partial to the idea that this earth is entirely
 impermanent in every possible way. My teen years in Oregon
 cemented the notion, as I watched simple blackberries
 climb up and tear down old farm buildings, and even a
 steel silo, on our property. Nothing lasts forever, why
 should gopher content?

- Archive.org is awesome, and I use it all the time. Being a
 retro computing hobbyist, I frequently find links that no
 longer work; and frequently, archive.org brings them back
 for one more hoorah.

 Even so, I haven't always played nicely with archive.org.
 Once, I wanted a few things to be forgotten, for various
 personal reasons. I took my sites down, then contacted
 archive.org to have my content scrubbed (I should have
 done that in the reverse order, to make proving ownership
 easier). The process wasn't painless, but it was fairly
 effective. I appreciate that they were willing to work
 with me on my wishes for my content.

- The "individual archivist" is an awesome idea. If you like
 it, and want to keep it, then keep it. Gopher supports
 this rather well, and the kind of client that solderpunk
 describes would be simple enough. An exceptional solution;
 the only question would arise when someone wanted to share
 their archive.

As for my content, like conman[4], everything I put "online"
in any form, I consider public. Not that it's not mine, but
that everyone can see it, save it, share it, comment on it,
abuse it, hit me over the head with it- not that they should
do any of these things, but that they can do them if they
choose to.

One last rant, on gopher->http proxies: I can't stand these,
because of the rate at which Google picks them up. I realize
they're a potential gateway for new readers/users on gopher,
but I just can't stand them. And yet, there's really not a
whole lot that I am willing and able to do about it. Life
goes on, and I don't lose any sleep over it. Gopher is still
awesome.

[1] gopher://sdf.org:70/0/users/gallowsgryph/phlog/2019-10-29_archives.txt
[2] gopher://sdf.org/1/users/sysdharma/phlog/./2019.10.28
[3] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/%7eyargo/clog/xu-gopher-archive-civil-rights.txt
[4] gopher://gopher.conman.org:70/0Phlog:2019/10/29.2
[5] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/0/~solderpunk/phlog/the-individual-archivist-and-ghosts-of-gophers-past.txt