My outlooks on preservation are so often at odds with everything else and I know it's a problem but also damn.

Something that proves itself true time and time again is if a third party comes into a community to do archival/preservation, it's pretty often they are not serving the needs of that community, nor are they caring about them. AT has a habit of stepping on toes and we all know it.

But also archival requires means that aren't accessible to most groups. You need an entire distinct infrastructure to store things that will survive your community/org collapsing and will not require continued investment once it becomes "relevant".

Furthering this problem is wide-angle preservation like what SWH and ADO do has an exponentially scaling cost. Not only are you trying to save All The Things, you are not directly tied to what you're saving to have a pulse on what's at risk and what isn't.

Not to even start debates on things I've seen AT bandy about about "Well this isn't culturally relevant so we're not using our limited resources on it" and how that is an extremely subjective and inaccurate call to make that you can't take back if you find out later you're wrong.

It's a mess. I don't have a good solution. I wish I did.