The day before yesterday, I decided to write about content scraping and web crawlers as well as the addition of a small sentence that will appear on newer posts. I decided to not go through the hassle of updating all of my 260-something posts as… really… it’s going to take a while. I will update my reviews probably but there really is not much of a point, I guess, especially with a site of my scale.
Anyways, after a restless night and after thinking about it more, I wasn’t too sure if my reply was justified and if I understood it too well. Naithin‘s reply to my post helped a lot, as well, in giving me some context to why they’re doing that… and frankly, it’s understandable. Bloggers come and go. I see plenty of people turn up as Newbies or Mentors to the Blaugust event and it’s lovely… but some of them just don’t post as regularly anymore, which is not quite lovely.
Sometimes people burn out from it or real life happens and honestly, blogging consistently can be a bit of a hassle. For the last eighteen days, I’ve tried myself at posting daily just to see how long I can keep this up and I’m already noticing that it’s becoming harder and harder to schedule posts or to make it within a day’s time. Reviews are also hard to write up under time pressure – a process I’ll document eventually as well as a prompt.
So, the site in question that I didn’t out in the initial post was the “Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation [that is currently selecting] different websites for inclusion in its Digital Gaming Communities Web Archive. The Archive is an initiative developed by librarians at Dartmouth College, the University of Chicago, and Duke, Michigan State, and Wilfried Laurier Universities under the auspices of the Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation. [They] preserve content, across varying web formats, generated by and related to digital games, in order to foster research within the discipline. Themes of the collection include critical gaming, game ethics, accessibility in gaming and game design, and user reviews and playthroughs.”
So, if I were to look at the themes, I could check off quite a few of those:
- critical gaming? Check.
- game ethics? Check.
- accessibility in gaming and game design? Check.
- user reviews? Check.
- playthroughs? Check.
I kinda talk about those topics here and there and I guess my site can be a resource for them. It will also allow future generations to view my reviews and whatnot when I’m no longer able to write up posts. On top of that, it’s going to enable them to research my thoughts, views, posts, etc. even when WordPress is no longer doing what WordPress is doing. I mean, everything has an end eventually and if I die, I doubt I’ll be able to post any longer. I hope that I’ll be able to write up a “RIP” post just in case I die… In fact, maybe I should write up one like that now and schedule it… and just always re-schedule it while I’m alive until I no longer am alive. That’s kinda grim, now that I think about it… so Nah.
Essentially, the Archive-It page can be found over here. Searching through the video games page will reveal that TAGN, Endgame Viable, BioBreak, Aeternus Gaming and Aywren are already part of it, which is nice to see. Looking forward to being a part of it, too, and to see other people’s websites be put on there as well.
My point still stands: Their overly flowery language bothered me initially and it still bothers me that the initial e-mail basically said something along the lines of “we’re gonna do this and if you don’t respond, we will just assume that you’re okay with this”. If the e-mail had arrived in the spam-folder, I probably would have missed it and they probably would have done it without my approval, from what I can see… At least that’s how I understand it. With English being my third language, it was kind of hard to see that.
Still, I apologized to Samantha Abrams and explained what lead to my decision and why I’m now changing my mind. She understood being sceptical of the initial e-mail. On top of that, she appreciated the feedback on the language and said that she can actually be more straightforward in their outreach, so I hope that this maybe even changes the way other people will think about it.
Kind of proud of how this Blogging-thing is turning out. We got featured on a different site, feedspot, before, and I’ve been happy that we got a lot of referrals from there. Through Twitter and multiple other blogs, we also received a bunch of referrals and maybe the archive will result in something like that as well.
Hence, that would result in more people finding my reviews on some of those Indie gems I’ve been talking about in previous posts… and people will check those games out and have a fun time. My thoughts on political standpoints or on gaming etiquette and Twitch etiquette will prevail quite a bunch. At the same time, my more embarrassing posts ridden with typos will prevail for eternity… “Yikes forever.”
So, just a little update on the situation and me changing my mind.
Cheers!
This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well. If you find this post on a website other than Indiecator.org, please write an e-mail to me. Thank you!
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I missed your original post, but I’ve had to deal with content crawlers before and have the following on my disclaimer page:
“Blog Rolls and Harvesting Sites
Unless specific consent is provided in writing by Heather T, Just Geeking By/Ruby Wings Blog may not be harvested or added to any website or “Blog Roll”. For the purpose of this disclaimer, a harvesting site/blog rolls are defined as a website that copies blog posts and reposts them in their entirety on that website.”
Basically, as long as you have somewhere clear and obvious on your website stating what people can and can’t do with your content you are legally protected. So even if a Library or other organisation with the best of intentions does send you an email saying ‘we want to do this, if you don’t reply we’re doing this anyway’ – they can’t do it. Or they shouldn’t. If they do you can threaten to sue, or at least demand they remove the content within a reasonable time (48 hours). If they ignore you then the next step is to go straight to their web host. A library will take you seriously because librarians are one of the leading fields in data protection and copyright law, and it looks bad on their institution if you kick up a fuss.
The only reason I can surmise that the team running a project like this has such a clause in the emails they send out is that probably about 80% (if not more) of the web content out there is dead. I’ve run a lot of web projects over the years and sites go inactive so much, so if they want to preserve any content at all they can’t wait for people to reply because the fact is most of the people won’t reply. They’ve already disappeared into the WWW. So I admire what they’re trying to do from a Librarian and personal standpoint but agree with you on the fact that they need to fix the way they’re approaching people.
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