29 Apr
2020
29 Apr
'20
1:17 a.m.
I just noticed through random chance that there was a new release
back in January: https://metacpan.org/release/OpenGuides
I mention in case anyone is interested.
It's been a very long time since I even thought about OpenGuides,
I'm afraid. But since for the first time since I can remember
I got emailed by london.openguides.org (with a user who was
mainly trying ot leave a message about how out of date everything
is). And according to my email archives it's being in "wind down"
state for about a decade... I think it accidentally regained editability
after a sever migration a few years ago.
Neither cambridge, london or oxford are being actively used or
maintained by anyone, as far as I know, for many years, so it's
probably time I (not-so?)-gracefully turn them all off.
29 Apr
29 Apr
1:43 p.m.
New subject: [OGL] There was a release; also, time passed
On Wed 29 Apr 2020, Dominic Hargreaves <dom(a)earth.li> wrote:
I just noticed through random chance that there was a
new release
back in January: https://metacpan.org/release/OpenGuides
I mention in case anyone is interested.
Yes, sorry that wasn’t announced more widely! I was quite busy at the
time of the release[*], couldn’t remember how to work the OpenGuides
website, and didn’t have time to figure it out. Apparently I also
forgot that openguides-dev existed. I think bob did put it on Twitter.
Neither cambridge, london or oxford are being actively
used or
maintained by anyone, as far as I know, for many years, so it's
probably time I (not-so?)-gracefully turn them all off.
I have a feeling I’ve made this plea here before, but speaking as a
local historian, I don’t think these websites should just be deleted.
I agree that it needs to be made very clear that the information isn’t
current (didn’t london once have a banner at the top of every page
saying this?), but all three of the above are useful sources for local
historians, and surely london is also of some interest to historians
of technology.
bob is happy to host the sites if Dom doesn’t want to do it any more,
and if bob is hosting them then I’m happy to admin them.
Kake
[*] Incidentally, this was mainly due to working on an OpenGuides
site, i.e. Croydon In The 2010s, which is the new name for the
Completists’ Guide to Croydon.
30 Apr
30 Apr
5:14 p.m.
New subject: [OGL] There was a release; also, time passed
On 29/04/2020 13:43, Kake wrote:
On Wed 29 Apr 2020, Dominic Hargreaves
<dom(a)earth.li> wrote:
Did you know that the British Library has a programme for archiving
websites? Provided that they are primarily original-content-driven then
they want to archive even personal sites (they're archiving my cricket
blog <https://larvalstageumpire.sport.blog/>, for example), so
Openguides sites would certainly qualify. They may already be aware of
the OG sites, but if not they're happy to take nominations from the
public for sites to archive. See here:
https://www.bl.uk/collection-guides/uk-web-archive
--
David Cantrell
Neither cambridge, london or oxford are being
actively used or
maintained by anyone, as far as I know, for many years, so it's
probably time I (not-so?)-gracefully turn them all off.
I have a feeling I’ve made
this plea here before, but speaking as a
local historian, I don’t think these websites should just be deleted.
19 May
19 May
8:12 p.m.
New subject: [OGL] There was a release; also, time passed
Oops, time passed (anyone else finding that's happening these days?)
On Wed, Apr 29, 2020 at 01:43:47PM +0100, Kake wrote:
London has a message on the front page, but I think that is not as useful.
True, it wouldn't be hard to update the templates, so I'll do that
soonish, and try and tidy up Oxford and Cambridge (spoiler alert, when
I started to do this the other week, I ended up breaking the database,
so it's currently offline awaiting time to resurrect it).
On Wed 29 Apr 2020, Dominic Hargreaves
<dom(a)earth.li> wrote:
Neither
cambridge, london or oxford are being actively used or
maintained by anyone, as far as I know, for many years, so it's
probably time I (not-so?)-gracefully turn them all off.
I have a feeling I’ve made this plea here before, but speaking as a
local historian, I don’t think these websites should just be deleted.
I agree that it needs to be made very clear that the information isn’t
current (didn’t london once have a banner at the top of every page
saying this?), but all three of the above are useful sources for local
historians, and surely london is also of some interest to historians
of technology. bob is happy to host the sites if Dom doesn’t want to
do it any more,
and if bob is hosting them then I’m happy to admin them.
If they are truly read-only, and can be cleaned up, there overhead
in running them is small. But on the other hand, running the software
is probably not the most effective way to set up an long-lived
archive. A static HTML export, either hosted locally, or being hosted
by one of the options discussed below, would make more sense.
Something to think about, anyway.
On Thu, Apr 30, 2020 at 05:14:18PM +0100, David Cantrell wrote:
> On 29/04/2020 13:43, Kake wrote:
> On Wed 29 Apr 2020, Dominic Hargreaves
<dom(a)earth.li> wrote:
> > > Neither cambridge, london or oxford are
being actively used or
> > > maintained by anyone, as far as I know, for many years, so it's
> > > probably time I (not-so?)-gracefully turn them all off.
> > I have a feeling I’ve made this plea here before, but speaking as a
> > local historian, I don’t think these websites should just be deleted.
>
> Did you know that the British Library has a programme for archiving
> websites? Provided that they are primarily original-content-driven then they
> want to archive even personal sites (they're archiving my cricket blog
> <https://larvalstageumpire.sport.blog/>, for example), so Openguides sites
> would certainly qualify. They may already be aware of the OG sites, but if
> not they're happy to take nominations from the public for sites to archive.
> See here:
> https://www.bl.uk/collection-guides/uk-web-archive
This is very interesting, although it didn't strike me as being the
most accessible set of sites (quite a lot of clicking around to find
content that was actually available to the public). I was going to
suggest the archive.org as being good enough.
Cheers
Dominic
20 May
20 May
10:06 a.m.
New subject: [OGL] There was a release; also, time passed
On Tue 19 May 2020, Dominic Hargreaves <dom(a)earth.li> wrote:
If they are truly read-only, and can be cleaned up,
there overhead
in running them is small. But on the other hand, running the software
is probably not the most effective way to set up an long-lived
archive. A static HTML export, either hosted locally, or being hosted
by one of the options discussed below, would make more sense.
Yes, in the long run I want to do a static export of the Croydon
site. I’m keeping it running on OpenGuides for now since I’m still
adding historical information and also I’d like to transition the page
titles over to addresses as the current businesses close (which... is
going to happen faster than usual, I suspect, since quite a lot of
them aren’t going to make it through all this).
A couple of examples:
https://croydon.randomness.org.uk/wiki.cgi?20_Park_Street
https://croydon.randomness.org.uk/wiki.cgi?17_London_Road
I’m wondering if doing something similar for Oxford would be a good idea. A
fair bit of it could probably be done remotely using Street View. If you
don’t want to leave the sites open for all public editing, you could do
something like I’ve done for the Croydon one, which has editable and
non-editable versions running off the same database.
[archiving projects]
This is very interesting, although it didn't
strike me as being the
most accessible set of sites (quite a lot of clicking around to find
content that was actually available to the public). I was going to
suggest the archive.org as being good enough.
I’m not sure it actually is good enough for the purposes of local
historians, since the archived sites aren’t searchable and AFAIK aren’t
indexed by Google either. Fine if you already know that an Oxford Guide
exists (and its URL), no good if you’re websearching for info about Oxford
in the past, or about a specific pub/whatever.
Kake
11:20 p.m.
New subject: [OGL] There was a release; also, time passed
On 19/05/2020 20:12, Dominic Hargreaves wrote:
On Thu, Apr 30, 2020 at 05:14:18PM +0100, David
Cantrell wrote:
Most of their archived web content is deliberately only available in
their reading rooms. archive.org is also a good choice, although I
wouldn't trust them to keep content for hundreds of years as much as I
would trust the BL. It trades longevity and permanence for accessibility.
--
David Cantrell
On 29/04/2020 13:43, Kake wrote:
This is very interesting,
although it didn't strike me as being the
most accessible set of sites (quite a lot of clicking around to find
content that was actually available to the public). I was going to
suggest the archive.org as being good enough. On Wed 29 Apr 2020, Dominic Hargreaves
<dom(a)earth.li> wrote:
Did you know
that the British Library has a programme for archiving
websites? Provided that they are primarily original-content-driven then they
want to archive even personal sites (they're archiving my cricket blog
<https://larvalstageumpire.sport.blog/>, for example), so Openguides sites
would certainly qualify. They may already be aware of the OG sites, but if
not they're happy to take nominations from the public for sites to archive.
See here:
https://www.bl.uk/collection-guides/uk-web-archive Neither cambridge, london or oxford are being
actively used or
maintained by anyone, as far as I know, for many years, so it's
probably time I (not-so?)-gracefully turn them all off.
I have a feeling I’ve made
this plea here before, but speaking as a
local historian, I don’t think these websites should just be deleted.
1292
days inactive
1313
days old
openguides-dev@lists.openguides.org
5 comments
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participants (3)
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Kake