They mention that they already have come across sources that had been emptied of all the data... So No... This is not a just in case; there seems to be a concerted effort to destroy data that proves inconvenient things...
> They can’t be sure when this data disappeared (or if anyone backed it up first).
It probably means that is was deleted a few years ago, not during the last 25 days. Perhaps it was some internal reorganization and the data is hopefully available in other URL. Perhaps it was a disk failure and a bad backup. Perhaps the main researcher got a better job at an university and moved the whole group and the links/server just rotted. Perhaps some moron sysadmin decided to save a little of disk space. It looks ridiculous, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11_missing_tapes
There is no evidence of a concerted effort.
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To get an idea of the problem, imagine that in 10 years someone decides to make a backup of all the ancient open source projects. And they are horrified to discover that 20% of the links go to SourceForge and there is a 5% of links with apparent relevant information to ExpertsExchange! After some time you get link rote, without an evil external force.
That's why I think it's important to make an organized effort to keep information alive, like the work of https://archive.org/ . I just don't agree to use a normal sloppy human behavior to support political activism.
> They can’t be sure when this data disappeared (or if anyone backed it up first).
It probably means that is was deleted a few years ago, not during the last 25 days. Perhaps it was some internal reorganization and the data is hopefully available in other URL. Perhaps it was a disk failure and a bad backup. Perhaps the main researcher got a better job at an university and moved the whole group and the links/server just rotted. Perhaps some moron sysadmin decided to save a little of disk space. It looks ridiculous, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11_missing_tapes
There is no evidence of a concerted effort.
--
To get an idea of the problem, imagine that in 10 years someone decides to make a backup of all the ancient open source projects. And they are horrified to discover that 20% of the links go to SourceForge and there is a 5% of links with apparent relevant information to ExpertsExchange! After some time you get link rote, without an evil external force.
That's why I think it's important to make an organized effort to keep information alive, like the work of https://archive.org/ . I just don't agree to use a normal sloppy human behavior to support political activism.