

Please Donate to the Internet Archive - cleverjake
http://blog.archive.org/2011/12/07/please-donate-to-the-internet-archive/

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lincolnwebs
I now own a vibrant community website, started in 2000, that was compromised &
erased in 2003. The previous owner had no backups. Hundreds of articles, tens
of thousands of forum discussions, and hundreds of thousands comments were
lost. We regrouped, and rebuilt the community. Archive.org was the only record
left of any of the content, and we grabbed & distributed lost member avatars
to quickly make the new site feel like home. I still reference it from time to
time to piece together gaps in our history.

If the Internet has any institutions at all, Archive.org is first among them.
Donation sent.

~~~
bad_user
Also see the famous case of Jeff Atwood losing and recovering the articles
from codinghorror.com and blog.stackoverflow.com ...

[1]
[http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/12065/recovering-...](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/12065/recovering-
a-lost-website-with-no-backup)

[2] [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/12/international-
backu...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/12/international-backup-
awareness-day.html)

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groaner
I had to dig through their site to find this, as it wasn't immediately noted
on their donation page, but they are a 501(c)(3) non-profit and donations
should be tax-deductible for US taxpayers.

<http://www.archive.org/about/about.php>

~~~
Groxx
FYI: it's on the front page, on the top-right container, labeled "Welcome to
the Archive". But the site isn't the best layout on the internet, it's pretty
easy to miss.

~~~
groaner
Wow. Haven't felt so blind in a while! Good catch.

~~~
Groxx
I doubt you're alone in that :) And it's quite possible your comment here will
be seen by more people, so it serves its purpose :D

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mironathetin
The internet archive does a really good job. Why isn't it possible to
establish a payment for good work in the internet? The fact that everything
has to be free lead us to the really evil use/abuse of private data by the
likes of Google, Facebook etc.

I think we need a good idea to assure payment also for internet services. Lets
face it: nothing is free in this world. It sometimes just looks as if.

Donation send for this time. But if someone has a good idea how to finance
good services, please speak. (I think, Mozilla might listen too).

~~~
MengYuanLong
I'm not sure I fully understood your comment but flattr is an interesting
platform for paying small sums to pages you enjoy. You may enjoy it if it is
new to you. <http://www.flattr.com>

~~~
mironathetin
There are ways to collect money. But clients seem to be hesitating. They
expect "free" services.

~~~
BruceZ
Bitcoin seems like a perfect solution for solving this problem.

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jmspring
Going to <http://archive.org> the only notification for "donate" is a text
link in "announcements". It seems like they could make the link a bit less
subtle, but still be tasteful.

I specifically went to the page looking for how to donate (rather than going
through the linked to blog post.

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Groxx
Absolutely. It's the only way to find a huge chunk of the internet, and it's
been endlessly useful to me. Second only to Wikipedia, I'd say, though it's a
lot less well-known.

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djenryte
I was walking home yesterday and saw a small sign denoting the Internet
Archive building on Clement and Funston St. in Inner Richmond, SF. A bit
surreal seeing the Archive of the Internet(!!) housed in white pillared
building. And today, here it is on the fp of hn.

[http://maps.google.com/maps?q=internet+archive&hl=en&...](http://maps.google.com/maps?q=internet+archive&hl=en&ll=37.782611,-122.471733&spn=0.002989,0.005364&sll=37.780791,-122.471142&sspn=0.001503,0.002682&vpsrc=6&hnear=Archive-
It,+300+Funston+Ave,+San+Francisco,+California+94118&t=m&z=18&layer=c&cbll=37.782611,-122.471733&panoid=U6HnGOJT0NhzyN2PRLBdww&cbp=12,151.06,,0,-7.92)

~~~
neilk
It's a former Christian Science temple.

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cleverjake
If there ever was a perfect example of "don't be a free user", this would be
it.

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sneak
Fell out of the funnel when they asked me to create an account on JustGive. I
don't use PayPal.

Give me a form I can type my payment details in, and I'm game.

~~~
donw
Same here; I've asked them if they have any other options, and failing that,
I'll just use the check-by-mail feature of my bank.

Sites that do this universally bounce me. If somebody wants to give you money,
the worst thing you can do is get in their way.

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wootish
It would have been nice if they did not have the "minimum $10" clause. I am
sure there should be a lot of students and third world people willing to help
within their means.

~~~
ig1
If you can't afford $10 then you hold probably just keep the money, you need
it more than they do.

~~~
wootish
Do you realize $10 has a higher value in developing countries? If not, I am
surprised you are on HN!

------
plusbryan
I had the pleasure of meeting brewster through a free event I was putting on
some time ago. He is a remarkably generous man, in all senses of the word.
Donation sent.

------
VoxPelli
They have twenty donations waiting for them on Flattr:
<https://flattr.com/thing/425480>

------
av500
when I read the headline, I thought they meant content, not money. I was ready
to mail them a few harddrives with worthy "stuff"...

~~~
cleverjake
you should contact Jason Scott, if thats the case. HE acepts all comers -
<https://twitter.com/textfiles>

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maximusprime
160 employees? that seems like a lot to me. So no, sorry, I'm not going to
donate. I'd rather donate to charities that really need money.

~~~
redslazer
You would be surprised that most charities spend excessive amounts of their
donations to raise more money. An online charity that is using its money to
employ people is a better charity than one that publishes glossy brochures or
takes out advertisements.

~~~
pwaring
Do you have any figures to back that up? Most charities here in the UK publish
their expense ratios (i.e. how much is spent on admin, fundraising, on the
actual good cause etc.) and they tend to be fairly efficient.

~~~
nodata
A lot of big charities in the UK employee "clipboard-nazis" near busy shopping
areas to get people to sign up and make you feel guilty if you don't. These
people normally earn 25 GBP per sign-up (which takes on average 10 months to
recover iirc). Other charities spam you with mailings.

Now clearly this works: they are raising more money this way, but the side
effect is that people like me refuse to give to a charity that hassles me
every time I go to the supermarket, and spams me every time I give them money.

~~~
neilk
These days, that is generally done through an intermediary firm. I don't think
many charities hire their own clipboard-wielding youths, so they wouldn't be
counted as employees.

By the way, I had some trouble figuring out the right term to put into a
search engine. Turns out the industry term for this is "face-to-face street
fundraising". And in the UK it's sometimes called "charity mugging" or even
"chugging", which you have to admit is more amusing than going straight to
Godwin...

~~~
pwaring
Some charities do employ their own staff, because they want greater control
over the process and staff who know about the charity, rather than agency
staff who might be 'selling' a different charity each week.

Even if they're an agency, the ones I know of are paid hourly, not per sign-
up.

