A wealth of real human knowledge lives on reddit, stack exchange, etc-- Given the sheer volume of AI slop and SEO fake pages with "articles" the better content is hard to find. This is most true if looking for help on a subject you know little about.
How could we motivate a collaborative not-for-profit catalog of the better content silo'd off from the commercial web? How to fund it and keep it current?
Basically a *staffed* online library for the world. And not just of books and publications.
The Internet Archive does some of this work along with Wayback. But, I'm thinking of a bigger vision. If I want to know how to fix a stove, or read what people have done when their pet was sick, there are books that can help, but internet resources are just as important. And this was fine before the deluge began. Increasingly one must use tricks like limiting the year, or going to sites with no future to find this stuff and I'm concerned.
Maybe I'm getting old ... but search is very very very broken. It's not that I encounter nonsense from time to time, often I just can't find what I'm searching for at all.
I need a reference librarian, but not just for publications. And some of this information is in danger of just vanishing forever (see reddit)
Does anyone think the internet is worth saving?
@futurebird I expect that you'll find many folks with similar frustrations within the data hoarder community - for all the issues that that community has, quite a few people are there out of a genuine desire to collect and catalog the 'stuff worth saving', but without either the funding or organization to do it in any kind of structured way.
The people to do this work are there, I think. Many even as unpaid volunteers. But they need a sufficiently accessible organization to center around and get involved in. And a lot of the existing archival organizations are anything but accessible or easy to get involved in...
@joepie91 @futurebird I agree with this analysis. The data hoarders are really important but the things they care less about (if they care at all about) are things like accessibility, access, search and helping people who are just not that resourceful. It would be neat to do a partnership. Remember the Internet Public Library? That was a thing of beauty.