Michael L. Nelson
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phonedudemln.bsky.social
Michael L. Nelson
@phonedudemln.bsky.social
290 followers 220 following 69 posts
Professor & Eminent Scholar, Old Dominion University Web Science & Digital Libraries Group (WS-DL) Dept of Computer Science School of Data Science Virginia Modeling, Simulation & Analysis Center (VMASC) Office of Enterprise Research & Innovation (OERI)
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Reposted by Michael L. Nelson
This is why we can’t have nice things
arXiv will no longer accept review articles and position papers unless they have been accepted at a journal or a conference and complete successful peer review.

This is due to being overwhelmed by a hundreds of AI generated papers a month.

Yet another open submission process killed by LLMs.
Attention Authors: Updated Practice for Review Articles and Position Papers in arXiv CS Category – arXiv blog
blog.arxiv.org
Reposted by Michael L. Nelson
Our October ODU-CS PhD Gathering featured a talk from my PhD student, Tarannum Zaki (@tarannum44.bsky.social), based on our ACM Hypertext 2025 paper, "Web Archives for Verifying Attribution in Twitter Screenshots", preprint at arxiv.org/abs/2510.22939
@phonedudemln.bsky.social @webscidl.bsky.social
To study Twitter is to study archived Twitter. And if you're replaying archived pages, you need to be familiar with the different generations of UIs.

Tarannum Zaki of @webscidl.bsky.social explores and classifies the different UIs.

ws-dl.blogspot.com/2025/10/2025...
2025-10-26: Exploring the Different Generations of Twitter/X's Tweet UI
The Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group at Old Dominion University.
ws-dl.blogspot.com
Reposted by Michael L. Nelson
LIL fellow @maxy.bsky.social asked 14 scholars, archivists, designers, business leaders & engineers: "If you were given unlimited funding to design a system for storing and preserving digital information for at least a century, what would you do?"

Their answers:
lil.law.harvard.edu/generational...
Generational Data Interviews | Library Innovation Lab
14 Designs for Digital Preservation in 2025
lil.law.harvard.edu
Reposted by Michael L. Nelson
Was honoured to be part of this series, and to see so many thoughtful perspectives on this question! Check it out.
LIL fellow @maxy.bsky.social asked 14 scholars, archivists, designers, business leaders & engineers: "If you were given unlimited funding to design a system for storing and preserving digital information for at least a century, what would you do?"

Their answers:
lil.law.harvard.edu/generational...
Generational Data Interviews | Library Innovation Lab
14 Designs for Digital Preservation in 2025
lil.law.harvard.edu
A good & perceptive article that resonated in our ongoing chat "grumpy old folks talk about how the web used to be".

It does miss the nuance that in the early days, robots.txt was just as much for the robot's protection as it was the server's. Getting trapped in a calendar was bad for both parties.
"The world after robots.txt is already visible. Content creators are retreating behind technical barriers, Cloudflare is becoming the new gatekeeper of the internet, and the open web is fragmenting into licensed silos."

ht @hvdsomp.w3c.social.ap.brid.gy

www.heise.de/en/backgroun...
Obituary: Farewell to robots.txt (1994-2025)
The voluntary compliance protocol that civilized the internet has departed, bids Henning Fries farewell.
www.heise.de
Which means somewhere, there is this logic:

1. for lucky URLs, like goo.gl/6ZkCpc, keep redirecting

2. for unlucky URLs, like goo.gl/0R8XX6, return Google 404 page

3. for URLs that never existed, like goo.gl/asdkfljlsdjf..., return Firebase 404 page

Having Step 2 is more work & less service :-(
cf. with a URL that was never a redirecting shortened URL:

goo.gl/111112

note the Firebase-branded 404 HTML page

no record that it ever existed:

web.archive.org/web/*/https:...
another unlucky URL:

goo.gl/111111

it used to redirect, but lacked traffic in "late 2024" and now returns a Google-branded HTML 404 page

archived redirects:

web.archive.org/web/*/https:...
The Internet Archive @archive.org has an exciting slate of events lined up for their 29th anniversary, including hitting 1T archived pages!

Check out: blog.archive.org/trillion/

#Wayback1T #WaybackMachine
Reposted by Michael L. Nelson
🌐 From the first web page created in 1991… to 1 trillion web pages archived today.

Every meme, blog, tweet & vanished site is part of our shared story. This is our collective memory. And it’s being saved.

Join in our celebration this October: blog.archive.org/trillion/

#Wayback1T #WaybackMachine
Reposted by Michael L. Nelson
NPR @npr.org · Oct 1
Today marks the first day in public media’s history without federal funding. And we’re not going anywhere.

Listeners like you keep our mission alive. Protect one of the last places where America comes together to hear itself.

Stand with us today. Donate at this link: n.pr/46wamAj