Over the last couple of years, I have been trying to gather together things like complete collections of MUD-Dev emails and a mirror of Imaginary Realities. The MUD-Dev collection is now complete, and while the linked Imaginary Realities mirror is just text, there is a full mirror of the original site in the wings to go live after processing.

But looking at Imaginary Realities, even though now there is a full mirror, the forums are missing. The forum software was home-brewed and rough, but there were interesting discussions that were had in there. Pinkfish doesn't have a copy of the posts. It's not in the Internet Archive. There is no chance we will ever see them again. It's not like Pinkfish would have ever thought that it would come to this, he would either have expected to retain a copy of the data (he had no backups of IR or mirror of his own) or that it would be online indefinitely as far as he was concerned.

What about MUD-Magic? What went on there? I probably only posted once or twice, and since I was paid to work on games at the time, never really had time to read it, but I would expect there were a lot of valuable posts made there. Are those posts preserved? Or are they taken off line by the administrator on his whim?

There have been at least two MUD wikis over the years that I at least have contributed to. Both taken offline at the whim of their administrators when they didn't take off, or they lost interest.

The key point I want to make is that the content we as posters contribute has value. That value may be locked into the web site where we contributed it, but it does not have to be this way. A site should offer the contributors a stakeholding, not in the ownership, but in the future of what they are contributing to. You can argue that the site is active and the administators are currently congenial, but past experience (see the examples above for a selection) has shown us that this is no guarantee. We need to do something about this in the now, or it may be too late when we realise what we have lost.

Now while I do not find Stack Overflow to be a pleasing site to use, it does make available all its content through a creative commons license. And the value of Stack Overflow is obvious, these days when I search for programming information, chances are the best and most direct help is in those that come from it. Then there is Wikipedia, another site that offers its content under the creative commons license. If the reddit/slashdot posts are anything to go by, it could be argued that the management of the site has become overbearing and it is on the wane.

Does anyone other than me share this concern? And if so, what might MUD-Bytes do in the now to prepare for its future preservation regardless of unforeseen circumstances or events?

I backup MudBytes nightly! :D.

How often did Kyndig backup? :D

Stuff uploaded to MB is already there under other distribution licenses, so I don't see why you wouldn't be allowed to download it all yourself. Forum and article content is another question, and currently there is no real license for the content, either to protect MB or people interested in preserving MB. To get strictly technical about it, MB couldn't release all the forum posts under some license without first getting the posters in question to release the same.

One thing that would be nice for uploaded content is a spider-friendly way to download it all, so that third parties can back up the content as well.

Kyndig was a crazy nutball screw job who didn't understand, that yes, while it was his site, the content was not his.

I think this suggests adherence to a level of presumed theoretically correct behaviour that is not consistent with how things really are. The primary example that comes to mind is the internet archive. It doesn't have explicit license to take, or display the content from any of the sites it mirrors, including what it contains of mud magic or mudbytes.

I think it really means that people do things on the assumption that it's ok, but if legal action is taken, things get removed as per normal law. Even on MB, I think people generally expect that when they post things the site can, well, display those posts, even though the technical license doesn't grant irrevocable right to display etc.

I do not care whose the content is, but I would like to see it preserved. What can we do about this?

And cue drama llama'ing about how the MB administration is just like (insert other bad thing) and this site is going to fail soon…

Everyone, get out now while you still can! Grab all the forum posts that you can carry!

</drama llama>

Now that I've said that, no one else should have to. I'm just trying to preempt any potential drama llama-like direction that this thread might decide to go in. Kthxbai.

I… don't know. Never really though about it. Figured the backups were enough.

Some sites make the content/backups available for download. The roguelike development wiki Roguebasin is a good example.

link: http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.o...

Most MUD related articles on Wikipedia are not noteworthy enough for inclusion, and can be deleted at any time with one week notice, mostly by users striving to become an administrator. I'm running mudpedia (http://mudpedia.org) which is intended to be a safe haven for MUD related content based on primary sources (opposed to Wikipedia which is based on secondary sources). If it'll ever go down I'll put up a backup.

That is not a solution that solves the problem I am trying to bring up here. Having the latest backup always available for people to download from now on would be.

Some situations that might arise (and have arisen for other services):

You are pushed into feeling that you do not want to host it anymore, so you take it down and go incommunicado.

The hosting site goes down and you do not have an up-to-date backup.

All your backups turn out to be corrupt.

Something happens to you and that is the reason it goes down, meaning your backups and plans to put them up for download are effectively non-existent.

Having contributed to two wikis so far that are no longer around, I would not consider contributing to one that does not provide data dumps.

Good points. I'll go ahead and upload a 2009 backup of mudpedia and try updating it twice yearly. It's too slow moving to warrant more frequent backups at the moment, but hopefully activity will pick up as it's the best (imo) set up mud wiki out there.

I think it's reasonable to assume an implied licence when someone makes a post, the question is really what the extent of that licence would be, and I'm not convinced that there's any clear answer.

I do agree with donky though, it's a shame when decent articles and posts vanish.

The only way to get MudMagic/Rage archive is to ask Kyndig himself. If he even has it.