[jrm4]

I think the confusion here (for me too) is what precisely is the purpose/meaning of "bring the size down?"

aka, is the is a "make it easier to search" question or "we need to take up fewer bytes" question (which, perhaps, used to be the same question, but aren't necessarily now?)

[rcxdude]

I think it's "I want people to make copies of this"

[DrFrugal]

it's a question of both "i can store this on my 4 TiB NVMe disk" and "i can share this with other people over the internet in a timely manner"