Steve Hayes wrote: > On Thu, 14 May 2009 13:22:35 +0100, Ian Goddard <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> www.archive.org might be one recovery route providing the site wasn't >> blocked. > > And here's another: > > http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1956 > >> But the moral of this "don't put all your eggs in one basket". > > Aye, but it's always easier to find a moral than a solution. On one level the solution should be obvious enough. If you're concerned to have material survive in the long term lodge it in as many different places as you can. Hosting sites, archives, etc. will assure you that they're in it for the long haul. They're hardly going to say otherwise and most of them will sincerely mean it. No doubt the librarians of Alexandria said and meant it, right up to the time the library was burnt. And so have many librarians and archivists since then. Nevertheless the future is not predictable and those giving such assurances will not always be around to deliver on them. Loss occurs. Survival is a matter of probability and the best way to increase probability is to multiply it. On another level there is the problem of what you should be looking to preserve. Much of the raw material, PRs etc., which has survived until now is pretty safe in that multiple copies exist. For instance the PRs of my local ancient parishes, although they may have gaps in them, are in the county archives, they have been microfilmed with many copies of the fiches around (I know of two copies in public libraries, the local family history society has copies as does the LDS & there will be other holdings), one has been published up to the early C18th and the other up to the mid C19th and of this last the first volume is on the Internet Archive and the local family history society and IGI have indexed much of both parishes. So maybe what's important is to preserve your family tree, your synthesis of that original material. However, if the records are unambiguous that's fairly pointless - given the survival of the raw material most of us here would recreate the same tree were we to examine it. If the records are ambiguous, however, or if some of the material isn't generally available then the derivation of the family tree will be less staightforward. It will depend on reasoning and/or unpublished sources and neither of those are visible in the end product, the tree. To give a couple of examples: 1. John Goddard was buried on 24/12/1814 aged 61 which implies that he was born in 1753 or maybe the very end of 1752. There were, in fact, two John Goddards baptised in the area in 1753 so there is an ambiguity. During the relevant part of those 61 years there were 9 children of John Goddard recorded as having been baptised and/or buried in the area. My reconstruction identifying the John Goddard as being the second of the 1753 children and, in passing, the identification of 8 of the 9 later children as his, depends on a chain of argument based on the consideration of about 3 dozen records. IGI has two member submissions, one agreeing with my view as regards 4 of the later children and one taking a very different view of another of them. As free-standing fragments of family trees there would be no obvious basis for preferring my interpretation against the contradictory one - it requires knowledge of the material consulted and the reasoning deployed, neither of which would be given as part of a simple family tree but which are the only thing worth preserving. 2. In the same year, 1753, William Goddard married Catherine Castle at the chapel of ease at Cumberworth. IGI has this as an extract, albeit with a spelling mistake, and as two member submissions, one associating the marriage with Elland and the other with Wath on Dearne. The actual register quite clearly states that both parties were from Kirkburton parish and married by banns published there. Now it may be the case that one or both of the member submissions are complete nonsense. On the other hand one or both of them may be based on other information which establishes a link between one or both parties and those other localities. If this information were shown in IGI it would make such a submission invaluable; without it they're worthless. -- Ian Hotmail is for spammers. Real mail address is igoddard at nildram co uk

On Sat, 16 May 2009 00:17:23 +0100, Ian Goddard <[email protected]> wrote: >Steve Hayes wrote: >> On Thu, 14 May 2009 13:22:35 +0100, Ian Goddard <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >>> www.archive.org might be one recovery route providing the site wasn't >>> blocked. >> >> And here's another: >> >> http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1956 >> >>> But the moral of this "don't put all your eggs in one basket". >> >> Aye, but it's always easier to find a moral than a solution. > >On one level the solution should be obvious enough. If you're concerned >to have material survive in the long term lodge it in as many different >places as you can. I think you misunderstood me. The problem is not how to ensure that your material survives. The problem is how to preserve the material that might be lost if Yahoo! pulls the plug on Geocities. -- Steve Hayes Web: http://hayesgreene.wordpress.com/ http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/famhist1.htm http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7783/

Steve Hayes wrote: > On Sat, 16 May 2009 00:17:23 +0100, Ian Goddard <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> Steve Hayes wrote: >>> On Thu, 14 May 2009 13:22:35 +0100, Ian Goddard <[email protected]> >>> wrote: >>> >>>> www.archive.org might be one recovery route providing the site wasn't >>>> blocked. >>> And here's another: >>> >>> http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1956 >>> >>>> But the moral of this "don't put all your eggs in one basket". >>> Aye, but it's always easier to find a moral than a solution. >> On one level the solution should be obvious enough. If you're concerned >> to have material survive in the long term lodge it in as many different >> places as you can. > > I think you misunderstood me. > > The problem is not how to ensure that your material survives. > > The problem is how to preserve the material that might be lost if Yahoo! pulls > the plug on Geocities. > > not IF but WHEN > Closure On April 23, 2009, Yahoo! announced that it would be closing GeoCities, and that it will no longer be accepting new registrations, though the existing GeoCities accounts will remain active until "later this year".[1] Yahoo! encouraged users to upgrade their accounts to the fee-based Yahoo! Web Hosting service.[16] With the closure of GeoCities, Yahoo! no longer offers free webpage hosting.[17] In response to the closure, rival webhosting services began to compete for the web sites leaving GeoCities. For instance, German web host Jimdo started the "Lifeboat for GeoCities" service to encourage GeoCities users to put their websites on Jimdo.[10][18] Rupert Goodwins, the editor of ZDNet, perceived the closure of GeoCities as an end of an era; he described GeoCities as "the first proof that you could have something really popular and still not make any money on the internet."[17] Vijay Mukhi, an Indian internet and cyber security expert quoted in the Business Standard, criticized Yahoo's handling of GeoCities; Mukhi described GeoCities as "a lost opportunity for Yahoo! They could have made it a Facebook if they wanted." Rich Skrenta, the CEO of Blekko, offered to buy GeoCities from Yahoo![19] << and more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoCities gogle results 1 - 100 of about 537,000 for geocities genealogy. (0.47 seconds) http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2009/04/geocities-to-shut-down-now-what.html Hugh W