{"id":20,"date":"2005-01-23T02:15:13","date_gmt":"2005-01-23T06:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/2005\/01\/23\/archiveorg-and-mixed-messages\/"},"modified":"2005-01-23T02:15:13","modified_gmt":"2005-01-23T06:15:13","slug":"archiveorg-and-mixed-messages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/2005\/01\/23\/archiveorg-and-mixed-messages\/","title":{"rendered":"Archive.org and mixed messages"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

\nArchive.org is one of the great organizations around.  They aim to
\nprovide pure services, aren’t afraid of trying out new and daring
\nprojects for improving public access to information, and stand for all
\nof the right ideals of openness and advancement through sharing.<\/p>\n

But they seem to suffer from quirks <\/span>like any other organization; they
\nhave a confusing and complicated website, which has only grown more
\nconfusing since two years ago, when I recall giving up trying to use it
\nto find out what I wanted to know about their content archives. 
\nToday I tried to upload some audio file to the site, and found that
\ntheir project nomenclautre was as inconsistent <\/span>and
\nconfusing [was I uploading “live music”?  No.  But that was
\nthe only link I had to follow for information on uploads], and their
\nchanging color schemes and profusion of navbar-like elements as
\ndistracting, as ever…<\/p>\n


\nJoi<\/a> tried to explain how easy it is to upload content to archive.org :<\/p>\n

[once you have created an account on the site and logged in]\n<\/div>\n
just ftp to audio-uploads.archive.org 
\n[logging in with your email address and password from the website]
\nmkdir the name of the file without the extension
\ncd to it
\nupload it
\nthen go to http:\/\/www.archive.org\/audio\/audio-contribute.php
\nimport it,
\ntag it and away it goes\n<\/div>\n

\nWell!  That might be pretty easy compared to downloading and
\ncompiling your own software, but it requires seven+ steps, two logins,
\nand two pieces of software. And this is a task that one presumes
\nnon-geeks are supposed to be able to do.  From an efficiency
\nstandpoint, this is a disaster… consider that the basic task at hand,
\nuploading a file<\/span> from your
\nmachine to a remote machine using a browser, is neatly handled by the
\ntwo-step “Browse…” form with which every Windows user and most web
\nusers are familiar.<\/p>\n

So I want to know how this could be allowed to happen?  How can
\nall of the brilliant people who I know both visit archive.org often,
\nknow its developers and supporters, have excellent design sense… how
\ncan these people let the site slouch around in its current state of
\nconfusion?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Archive.org is one of the great organizations around.  They aim to provide pure services, aren’t afraid of trying out new and daring projects for improving public access to information, and stand for all of the right ideals of openness and advancement through sharing. But they seem to suffer from quirks like any other organization; they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[206],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-la-mod"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}