Archiving LJ -- Interesting!

Dec 30, 2016 23:47

In my link-hunting today I found out that ArchiveTeam started backing up Livejournal in March of 2016. Details here: http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=LiveJournalRead more... )

livejournal, fandom history

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Comments 10

goldenusagi December 31 2016, 07:15:17 UTC
Like... backing up individual journals and stuff? And then doing what with them?

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rahirah December 31 2016, 16:53:15 UTC
They donate anything they back up to the Internet Archive (the people who run The Wayback Machine website.) I'm not sure what the implication is for locked entries; I'm planning on giving their archiving tool a try myself to see exactly what it does.

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tripleransom December 31 2016, 17:52:52 UTC
I'll have to check that out. You are correct - Wayback does not archive lj because of "robots.txt" or so it says.

Please let us know what you find out about Archive Team. I had not heard about them.

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rahirah January 2 2017, 03:35:02 UTC
I'll definitely let you know!

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I'll admit... (even though it may make me look in a negative light) harsens_rob January 1 2017, 04:51:09 UTC


I've been generally worried about Russians being in charge of LiveJournal. I also subscribe to the Internet Security, Kasperksy - which of course, is based in Russia.

I'd feel a lot better if Putin wasn't in charge of the Russian Gov't & we still had the atmosphere of 'Glasnost' in play. I really thought we'd turned a corner somehow during Gorbachev's reign, but it feels so much like we're going backward. Between ex-(Or current, I'm not sure he emotionally left..) KGB Putin and now too-chummy Trump as our President-elect, it feels like we're moving backward to me.

Maybe I'm just paranoid. I want to believe I am, but that doesn't stop me from worrying.

I can't completely avoid some small and [bitter?] voice in the back of my head saying "Don't trust Russia under Putin... they're doing 'something' with our data that isn't above board'.

Yes, I recognize the 'cold war' thinking... but I can't entirely suppress it. But at least I recognize it..., that counts for something, surely.

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Re: I'll admit... (even though it may make me look in a negative light) rahirah January 1 2017, 05:54:05 UTC
Honestly, I think that the data of users on English-speaking LJ is of supreme disinterest to anyone in Russia. They're interested in the political bloggers over there. I mean, maaaaaybe they might bother to go after people posting pro-LGBTQ stuff, but... I just don't think we're that important to them, you know?

What we really have to worry about, I am pretty sure, is the economic angle -- our half of LJ has been losing money hand over fist for years, and I don't think we can count on getting a free ride forever.

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Re: I'll admit... (even though it may make me look in a negative light) harsens_rob January 1 2017, 08:41:45 UTC

Oh, I had no idea about the financial end of things. It seems like there are (or maybe just were) a lot of posters, which presumably means subscribers. On the other hand, like I say, I don't know about the financial side of LJ's business.

This is worrying, mostly because I like my ruts. I found my place to post, and I don't want to try to move my reviews/start over someplace else! I'm far too lazy for that.

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shapinglight January 3 2017, 08:04:56 UTC
I remember there was a big move to archive individual LJs some years back (possibly when Livejournal was sold to the Russians by SixApart?) using a tool called lj archive. It worked really well. However, the link to it on that Wikipedia page is just returning a 404 error so sadly I don't think it works any more.

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rahirah January 3 2017, 16:12:36 UTC
It's still available here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/ljarchive/

I used it at one time, and I tried it again a few years ago -- but due to changes in LJ's code since LJArchive was last updated, it crashed trying to import comments. From the posts I've seen from people who've tried it in the last couple of weeks, some of them have gotten comments to import, but most haven't. That's a dealbreaker for me; I want to save comments. But for someone who's mainly interested in saving the posts themselves, it's definitely an option.

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shapinglight January 3 2017, 17:01:50 UTC
Thanks. I might do it anyway, just to have a record if both LJ and DW go bang.

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