All's well that ends well? ( hopefully)

[Scarletohello]

So I started the thread in AIBU about why don't more women come on FWR yesterday. WAs shocked at the responses so started the other thread on FWR to see how we could counter this ( as people were saying it was aggressive, patronising, elitist etc). Felt a bit overwhelmed at the vitriol directed at myself personally and also FWR so I withdrew from the discussion party because I couldn't cope with the personal attacks and also because I didn't want to inflame things further ( and cos I'm a bit of a coward) Although I wasn't posting, I was reading both threads with a mounting sense of horror, especially when I was accused of having brought the FWR board into disrepute and how it would put more women off posting there.

However, it seems like some incredibly useful discussions have resulted as a consequence as well as some great threads on FWR both for newbies and also what's great about FWR ( thanks both to Cailin and Buffy). Seems like it was a discussion waiting to be had as it has ignited great passion on both sides. I'm so relieved about this as I was mortified that something that had started with a genuine curiosity and desire to help seem to have been so badly misconstrued.

So I wanted to apologise to anyone here who was annoyed at me, I still don't understand why it all went so badly wrong, was I 'patronising'? ( certainly wasn't my intention). Any feedback about how I came across would be gratefully received but mainly I'm just hugely relieved that the ensuing debate has brought people over her and that some good has come out of it ( no credit to me, I know).

So thanks to all who have invested their time and energy in defending this board, it's something that's hugely important tome, there are a lot of brilliant, impassioned women here that I learn from every day and am proud to be part of.

Arrogance is a cardinal sin for women. We're supposed to be fluffy and accommodating, even when discussing our own oppression.

Are we not supposed to answer on the thread in here? Honestly, I thought the deal on MN was that you were supposed to take it up with the poster, on the thread in question.

Doesn't that apply in here? If not, why not? And don't you think that should be a sticky if it is indeed the case - so that newbies to FWR, like me, don't make a mistake and behave in this part of MN like we do on all the other sections? If there's some sort of unwritten rule of FWR that I've broken, then I'm sorry, but I didn't know (because it is unwritten).

I found the whole thing odd. I've never found FWR intimidating or arrogant, and I thought your posts asked reasonable questions.

They were all good threads. I think the OP raised such fundamental points - ie are we getting the tone of debate right - that it's unlikely they would ever be settled on one thread.

It's good we're talking about it openly. We need to thrash this one out, otherwise we'll never get past this ridiculous situation where the word 'feminism' is seen by women as divisive.

The power required for the storage needs of today is huge, and growing very fast. There are massive computer servers located in cool locations (because otherwise they overheat), more being built all the time... They use huge amounts of power.

Yes, the cloud is just loads of massive data centres with racks and racks of storage arrays. Facebook's main data centre is Sweden, apparently, because it's easier to cool.

What I suspect will happen is older data will quietly disappear, if it's not used - backup servers won't get upgraded, old hardware won't get migrated. It may be archived on to some form of static storage, but systems which can read it may not be easily accessible.

We're required to keep some financial data up to 10 years, some docs 7 years, a lot are less. Most organisations will be similar (including the government and its expenses.) If no hard copies were ever taken, it will all just go, and when the physical storage it was all on is decommissioned, they will be degaussed and physically destroyed (in theory; it can be expensive to do this, so i don't imagine all places are as diligent as others.)

But I may be wrong. The Internet of things might change some of it, and I am sure certain types of data will require longer retention periods.

It does all take massive, massive resources, though. The internet may allow more home working and thus lower transport resources, but any tech company claiming green credentials - it's all very relative. And then there's ethical resourcing of the components that go into the hardware...

(What was this thread about?)

ebearhug that's interesting. wrt scientific research, which obviously is seen as important to preserve, and an enormous amount is now online-only, it is seen as a moral imperative on the part of publishers and libraries to maintain a sustainable and reliable archive to ensure that the information remains available forever (well, for the foreseeable future). the preservation organisation i know of is called CLOCKSS, i don't know if there are others, but it's a collaboration with that aim

I suspect academic journals will be okay, at least from big publishers like Elsevier and so on. It's more smaller, more voluntary websites which are likely to disappear over time. The British Library has archived some websites if someone notifies them and it matches their criteria www.bl.uk/aboutus/stratpolprog/digi/webarch/, which is like CLOCKSS.

Thinking of libraries, it's only virtualised an age-old problems - they still need however many miles of new shelves each year, and now they also need however many petabytes of data storage, too, and somewhere, that's all in massive big datacentres.

And I should add that I am merely speculating - I don't know for sure about anything.