Links roundup: 8tracks and Yahoo Groups shutdowns

[duskpeterson]

This week, the news is mainly about the 8tracks shutdown, but the Yahoo Groups preservation portion of our project also received some notice.

FANDOM HISTORY RESCUE PROJECT IN THE NEWS

Saving Private Groups: This Time the Mission is the Fan, by The Mad Programer at Data Horde. "On October 22nd 2019 Tumblr user zhie started a Discord Server 'Save Yahoo Groups' (link above), the same day Morgandawn started a Tumblr blog: https://yahoo-geddon.tumblr.com/. These two outlets combined together to form Fandom's Sortie against Verizon's Yahoo Groups Siege."

Commentary on the above article at Hacker News.

The Early Internet, Explained by One Weird Celine Dion Fan Site, by Kaitlyn Tiffany at The Atlantic. "Preservationists at the Internet Archive and the Organization for Transformative Works, which runs the fan-owned fan-fiction platform Archive of Our Own, have been coordinating to save what they can. They're aided by a Tumblr-based group called the Yahoo Groups Fandom Rescue Project, which has been sharing tips on how to use Verizon’s buggy download tools and coordinating in a 200-person Discord channel. Despite these preservation efforts, things will be lost."

GENERAL

Data Horde. "A blog to connect internet archiving communities and to spread information about various archiving efforts."

OTW encourages fans to list their 8tracks playlists at Fanlore, with additional comments from our Tumblr blog and from vidderkidder (aka VidderAdmin) of Vidders.net.

The 8tracks shutdown saga, as it played out at Dreamwidth, with a post started by wedonnotcare.

Fanlore: 8tracks, with a reactions from fans to the shutdown.

A rather poignant commentary on the 8tracks shutdown, by NebulaFighters at Twitter. Many other fans have chimed in.

A New History of Fandom Purges, by olderthannetfic, updated to take into account Yahoo Groups and 8tracks.

A long thread on where fans first encountered fandom, started by sapphicshulkie at Twitter. Which has caused quite a few fans to mention Yahoo Groups.

Somebody loves LiveJournal, and is leaving notes at coffee shops to prove it.

FANDOM ARCHIVED

Archive Team: The 8Tracks Tape Removal at the Internet Archive.

OLDER RESOURCE SITES

Archive Team. Trying to preserve every at-risk portion of the Internet. Wow. See their Yahoo! Groups page for their current work with our Discord team. Here is their page on LiveJournal and their valuable Deathwatch.

ds_ficminers, run by our member juniperberry. Dedicated to preserving Due South fandom history. Many of the archived stories are from LiveJournal.

fanlore. Supporting and creating community among the editors of the Fanlore wiki.

marchmetamatterschallenge. Annual challenge for preserving meta and making it accessible.

Fanlore: LiveJournal.

lj.search. A search engine that searches a cache of LiveJournal, covering the years from 2000 to 2017.

OTW: LiveJournal.

LiveJournal bot policy.

Tool to scrape LiveJournal comments (old; may not still work).

Wayback tools:

• Chrome: Wayback Machine and Firefox: Wayback Machine lets you save a page to the Wayback Machine or find a page at the WaybackMachine.
• (Save Page Now offers a more sophisticated version of this preservation.
• You can also submit URLs to the Wayback Machine by email.
• WikiHow's instructions on how to browse the Wayback Machine. Because really, it's not obvious.

Wayback Machine tips:

• All the caches of a url: https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://example.net
• All the caches of all the pages at a domain: https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://example.net*
• The latest cache of a url: https://web.archive.org/web/2/http://example.net
• The latest cache in a particular month: https://web.archive.org/web/201401/http://example.net
• The latest cache in a particular year: https://web.archive.org/web/2014/http://example.net
• The latest cache in a particular decade: https://web.archive.org/web/200/http://example.net (i.e. 2000-2009)