Jesse,

On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 1:03 PM, Jesse Walker  wrote:
> I searched the archives for "router plane" and came back with many posts
> that had broken links, like a review on Lee Valley's router plane, pictures
> of a handmade scraper for the router plane, etc.

Certainly true.  One of the problems with the Internet.  It's so easy
to put stuff onto it, and so easy for stuff to disappear or move.

> Would a compromise be a better way of archiving the emails?  Is it hard to
> write a script to grab pictures from the links in an email and save the
> actual file, and not just the link, in the archive?

I'm sure something like that could be done, but there's no way I'd
want to pay for the storage or bandwidth it'd take to follow and
download every link to every "what-is-it" and "look what I made"
image.  Rather, I'd encourage posters to think about how best to
describe what it is they're discussing in words, using links to images
as a last resort.  Obviously, there are times where an image really
does "speak" 1,000 words, and there's no substitute for an image when
you're trying to show off your fabulous wazzit or newly finished roll
top desk.  But most of those sorts of images are transitory in nature
anyway.  Post-'you suck' / 'you've got an eighteenth century blurfl
rubber there!' / 'great desk!' maybe those images weren't really all
that archival to begin with.

The other *major* issue with images is copyright.  When you send an
email with a bunch of text that you've written, it's your words, sent
by you to a public List that is archived.  I think I'm pretty safe in
including it.  But it's more difficult for me (or another archivist)
to know whether an image being downloaded is something I can
re-publish.  That photo of a Lee Valley router plane that was linked
in an OldTools message, for example.  I probably don't have the right
to display that on my site because it's no longer taking the viewer to
Lee Valley's site where they're hoping to do business selling said
router plane.

In any case, the Archive needn't be thought of as THE ARCHIVE.  If
you've got an idea for how to scrape the list and produce something
better than my creaky old Perl (gaak!) script does, go for it!  I'd
love the opportunity to ditch MySQL on my server...

Cheers,

Chris
-- 
Christopher Swingley
Fairbanks, Alaska
http://swingleydev.com/
cswingle@g...
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