This has been a bit of a topic in both the Discord and the Patio chat we have here on the forum, so I thought it’d be an interesting thread to make!
Basically: What do you think about people erasing their websites when it becomes overwhelming, boring, or whatever? Do you think archival is important to maintain a record of what culture/the internet was like at this current time, or does one’s personal wish to be “gone” supersede that?
If someone puts something on the internet is it already too ‘public’ to have erasure/deletion be a valid wish?
I’m kind of iffy on this myself! I think if someone makes something with the intent to educate or inform or what have you, that should probably be preserved. But I also respect that some people have perfectly valid reasons (or no reason at all, which is also valid!) for just… not wanting their websites to be around anymore.
This is specifically just about personal websites, I think social media, physical media, etc are different beasts entirely.
It’s your website. It should be your decision alone. I think that unless an individual’s wish would violate another person’s rights or do quantifiable harm to others, their wish should take precedence over all other considerations.
I hold this opinion because I understand that having one’s own website, especially while leasing a domain, makes the operator a public figure of sorts. Most webmasters are extremely minor public figures, of course, but by existing on the internet by operating your own website you are participating in public life.
And anybody should be able to withdraw from public life if they want or need to.
Far as I’m concerned, people who don’t care about my wishes are abusers. Those things I want spread far and wide? I’ll push them out myself, and try to ensure their long-term survival. Another thing people do is call for help when they can’t keep a site online anymore. Haven’t needed that yet, but it’s an option.
But when I delete something from my site, or block it in robots.txt, I have a good reason. So please respect it. That’s why I appreciate for example the interactive fiction archive. People are generally expected to submit their own work, with some exceptions, and takedown requests are honored. That’s the right way to do it.
Archival is important. Archival for the sake of it can be outright dangerous (especially in times like these). And seriously, not everything is worth preserving. I’m vain, but not that vain.
If it is a question of them, or some aspect, wanting to disappear, by all means. I don’t think we asked people in history if they want their art conserved in the Louvre, and I would love to see an exception for art (and that doesn’t just include visual (music museum) (writing, all other kinds of expression)), but that brings up all kinds of issues of its own. However, I would love to see people who don’t want to lose what they have or don’t mind it staying around but just can’t afford the time or money to be preserved. With @nosycat about deletion or robots which is a way to have it not stored at Internet Archive, for one. Lots of people will put on graphics sites that these are gifts or not up for adoption and to respect that.
I think it should absolutely be okay for people to remove their own content from the Internet if they want to. For some people it can be a matter of personal safety, like if a trans person wants to take down a website where they talk about being trans to protect themself in a climate of growing danger. I don’t think there’s any situation I can think of where the importance of archival would override the necessity for personal safety in this way.
In the case of people who don’t want to remove their content from the Internet, I do think archival is important to keep around what authors want to be kept, I just also think that the author’s wishes supersede that importance.
I think someone should be able to delete their website if they wish. I’ve gone through stages of purging my social media accounts, and sometimes I just want to move on and forget that part of my life, leaving it untraceable to me. I don’t think I would do that with my website because I think it is more valuable than my social media accounts, but maybe one day I’ll want to get rid of my art gallery, OC pages, or blog since they are very personal to me and I don’t like the idea of people digging through my personal stuff to make speculations about me as if I am some public figure (as people did with sadgrl)
But if someone has saved your site to their computer, or saved it to the way back machine I think that’s within their right too. As long as it’s not out of malicious intent, they saw something worth saving and preserving.
I will always be sad to see someone delete their site, and even very frustrated if it had valuable information not found anywhere else (like Atmospheric Optics which I love so much, but has been taken down by its owner many times and blocked from the way back machine) but in the end I wouldn’t want to force someone to keep something up that they can’t maintain or want to move past. All I can do is save the pages I find valuable to my computer. I’m even considering getting them printed but I’m too self-conscious to ask to print out a whole bunch of website pages at the library and I’d want them to be in color bc well. They’re about rainbows.
I agree with @nosycat that archival just for archivals sake is senseless. There just So much, that you Have to decide what is important and what is be left forgotten. Seeing the daily lives of everyday people of the past is cool and valuable, but we don’t need to save literally everything to give a good idea of what our lives were like. Do I think my site is valuable to people now in the personal web, yes! I have tutorials and such. But will it be valuable after I’m gone? Probably not. I’m okay with disappearing and never being remembered. I’d actually rather not people talk about me and speculate about me even if it’s positive and I’m dead.
websites very much align with the part of my brain that is fine with burning down my creations and running away. while i’d like to move away from doing that, i don’t hold anything against someone who feels the need to do the same. having done this many times in my life for various reasons. i could certainly understand why someone would not want their website archived, or their works remembered
I’m mostly going to echo what others have said here, but I do think that people largely have the right to delete everything and be forgotten. Archival sites should respect robots.txt if they don’t already, thus preventing their site from being directly archived if desired.
However, if their site was a trove of valuable information, then people also have a right to preserve that information. Even if it comes in the form of a compromise, such as their raw instructions/writings being reposted elsewhere while the site itself (and any personal parts with it) are deleted. And that’s just one possible compromise - I’m sure others could be thought of based on the situation.
and I’d want them to be in color bc well. They’re about rainbows.