pouët.net

There is a general problem with links to prods breaking because people's hosting goes offline or being ddosed or whatever. Sure there is scene.org and untergrund (which has some problems every now and then too) but will those be online for a really long time?

A solution to archiving stuff could be with ipfs (InterPlanetary File System) http://ipfs.io

The way I understand it is each node hosts a hash to all files but not the files themselves, only the files one choose to download is actually hosted on the node machine. Plz correct me if I'm wrong. A link into the ipfs-thingamabob can then be displayed alongside each prod or in the mirror-list or whatever.

Thoughts on this?

p2p systems have been considered before.

you would need some sort of predetermined coherent structure though, which would end up with a scene.org mirror or something confusing as all hell.

adding a tracker system to scene.org to allow p2p distribution wouldn't be a bad idea though, reckon it could also cut some bandwidth costs (tbc). but the bottomline is that the active scene.org folks are imho too busy as it is to be able to focus on these kind of "innovations" to the archive system.

If I understand you correct you mean some central "tracker" or similar for coherent structure? The thing with ipfs is that the network, everybody that runs ipfs, is the coherent structure, like a block chain. See example here https://ipfs.io/docs/getting-started/ Links to ipfs resources can then be displayed in a place like pouët.net.

Yeah, this is a problem for sure. People put their demos on personal webspace, then sometimes they lose interest in the demoscene altogether, and the files mgiht be gone forever.
For C64 stuff CSDb have binaries of most releases, but other platforms might have lots of products lost. :/

Well, if the only person who hosts a file goes offline forever the file is lost, no matter if meta-data about it exists in some sort of distributed file-index or not.
So to make sure files never get lost a number of people would have to download stuff for archivings sake only, which is not that likely to happen for exotic/unknown prods.
Dont get me wrong, I like the Idea of a cloud-hostet or distributed filesystem but I fear it wouldnt increase data-security but just save you the "is anybody here who happens to have file xy?" call (and then again it wouldnt even do that since you cant make sure everyone is online or has all his data hooked up to the ipfs).

if its about "hosting on volatile webspace or even sharehosters instead of scene.org" it would probably help more to make the upload-to-scene.org process easier, for example integrate a upload functionality directly into the submit-prod form on pouet (although it would probably still need to be moved and checked manually by an admin before it is available to the public).

"let's put it on the cloud" is not a reliable backup/archiving solution.

There doesn't seem to be automatic replication of data to servers in IPFS, so that doesn't really help. If you want to archive stuff, you need a system that makes sure there are always N copies available on different machines.

Forgive me for my ignorance but it's quite hard to have more faith in some filesharing client with a stupid name that I've never heard of than in Viprinet, the University of Applied Sciences of Rotterdam, and the host institutes of scene.org's several international mirrors.

if only - there is still a long list of stuff that is wanted.... i'd actually say that the younger the platform, the more complete is what you can find on the net.

everything being available through one central place - now thats another story however.

what havoc said

Well, forbid everything except scene.org-links, and all will be fine forever from now on!

Gargaj coded that broken-links-thingamabob already, so if one wants to fix them, he would need to upload to scene.org and link it, done.

It could be that easy, you know!

I agree with Havoc, but I do find this thing interesting (because as they say, it's problematic that the predominant medium of our time is so .. "transitory"?)

http://ipfs.io/#why

I cant believe i'm saying this, but Hardy is sort of on to something. if you only accept certain hosts (for primary d/l link) such as scene.org then you can avoid later troubles when morons add stuff via their personal dropbox, geocities website or anything equally yesteryear. Most party-released stuff ends up on scene.org anyway, so, you'll cover 90% of the cases and the others just would have to make a bit more effort getting their stuff properly hosted.

And what if the author doesn't give a glöp about Pouet and its entries and thumb counts.

Thanks for your input folks. I never meant it as a replacement for scene.org, only as an extra backup alternative.

yzi: someone else will add it then...adding prods gives glöps. And we all want an as complete as possible database here i think. It´s not difficult to upload sth to scene.org.

If I'm not mistaken, scene.org is for party releases right? Great, but every now and then something interesting is released outside the party system. Even well known sceners do this, 4mat for instance ([http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=67951).

(Too big fingers for this phone but you can find it.)

it is not.

el topo: but you are (mistaken, that is)

hardy: you can't argue for restricting (upload) access to this site for the sake of a complete database, that's a pipedream unfortunately

Very well, could you tell me if this has always been the case? I started hosting some Amiga stuff at untergrund.net over a decade ago and I like to think there was a reason I choosed that over scene.org but memory is hazy. Scene.org is doing a site redesign now so I haven't found any upload policy document.

always was the case yeah
scene.org is mostly aimed at hosting files nowadays
untergrund is who you ask nicely if you need a website host or such

Let me phrase my opinion thusly: I don't agree with restricting hosts, but at the same time I wish people were more careful with where they host. There is too much sloppiness going on, at the same time this IPFS thing seems far from being a solution to it all.

wild idea: have pouet periodically download and mirror every submission to scene.org (or hell, aws s3). it's not like space cost or bandwidth are a problem for this anymore these days.

That doesn't need Pouet or Scene.org - if you say cost and bandwidth aren't a problem, you're welcome to implement a service that retrieves download links from the API and mirrors them to your S3. Once you've done that you'll see the problems with the idea.