2026-02-03 Long Web Society
===========================

I was exchanging emails with Ploum regarding my Dead Archivist
Society blog post from last year. We both don't have answers but each
one of us is thinking about this and that and wondering what to do.

What I've been thinking about is a bit like a webring or a club. What
if there was an organisational template that helped with the initial
setup -- like the idea of a bookclub, perhaps. It comes with articles
of association, some scripts, one day it might even come with a Debian
package.

Something like this:

> The Long Web Society
>
> If you and one friend each have 3 GiB on a computer that is online
> at least some of the time, you can start a chapter of the Long Web
> Society. Each chapter can have up to 30 members. Each member has 100
> MB of space for their static, self-contained website. All members
> share their website using bit-torrent. As long as one of you is
> alive, your chapter of the Long Web Society can keep seeding. As the
> years pass, you'll figure out what to do with the websites of the
> members that have passed. We'll treat your legacy with respect.
>
> Your starter package includes the following:

* a script to generate the top page

* a script to compress your files

* a script to generate torrent files

* a script to start seeding

This needs twenty more pages with a discussion of the scripts,
formats, generic articles of association. The organisational aspect
must be ready, too. There must be a place people can point to in the
beginning. The chapters must be able to increase membership, increase
size allotment.

The important part is that you get a starting point. Here's the rules,
here's the tools, and now do it for five years. See if you like it.
You can always tinker with it once you have started.

Somebody needs to explain the benefits and drawbacks of torrents. They
are immutable. So perhaps there's an "update exchange" once a year,
where all members send an updated torrent file to their fellow
members.

#Archives

2026-02-21. This can work with loose connections, too!

Tom Brandis, for example, offers a copy of his site: Website archive
using torrent.

I downloaded a copy. Sure, once he publishes a new archive, I need to
stop seeding his copy and switch over to the new one as well. It
therefore makes sense to send him an email so that he can send me
updates.

And yes, this is a low-key effort. Most of the time my laptop will not
be online and not seeding. But it will be, sometimes. 😊

2026-02-23. Here's a torrent of a ZIM file for this site, with
low-quality images. The ZIM file is about 1.2 GiB. That's big, I know.
😅 ZIM files can be read using Kiwix. Let me know if you're keeping
a copy of my site so I can let you know when I update it. I assume
that'll happen once a year.

The Makefile has a zim target to help me recreate it.