Bibliotheca Anonoma Restructuring

For over five years, the Bibliotheca Anonoma has been archiving internet folklife from various internet communities. But there's a lot of things that we could have done better. The Github Gollum wiki has shown it's limitations over the years. We haven't organized our projects well enough, or made decent tutorials to give people the skills to help out.

And most of all, we haven't really interacted with the community as well as we should have.

It's time for us to significantly restructure the organization.

The Situation

The Bibliotheca Anonoma has been hosted on Github using the Git-based Gollum wiki engine. This was not an accident, or a temporary gig: We chose Github Gollum because it offered free hosting, built-in spam protection, and a Git-based Wiki for easy history seeking. It also supports both MediaWiki and Markdown syntax at the same time, which was critical for importing articles from the Insurgency and LURKMOAR Wikis (for some reason, there is no MediaWiki to Markdown converter!).

Still, Gollum has it's limitations. For one, there is no extension system (at least it's not available on), so we can't do anything nice like MediaWiki templates. Also, it is extremely limited in the HTML tags it allows, so no YouTube embeds either.

And the sidebar is growing way too long to fit all the things we need to showcase.

The Restructuring

But don't worry, we won't be ditching the current wiki, it will stay the same. We're just going to build new infrastructure to complement or extend some of it's capabilities. Such as the following:

• This Blog - The blog will be our primary announcement system for the latest events, projects, and acquisitions of the organization. Since it is essentially a news reporting system, it will probably become an important record of the things we did, and the things we saw on the internet in itself.
• Archived Stories - The Compendium will store finalized content from the Bibliotheca Anonoma in a readable format and a categorized website database. This is only for very old, completed stories, ongoing tales will stay in the wiki for all to edit, as usual.
• Anonymous BBS - In our experience, the best way for the community to jump right in and discuss is via an anonymous forum. We'll set up a the Node.js-based http://atob.kthxb.ai textboard on a Red Hat Openshift app engine.
• 4chan Chronicle and 2ch Chronicle Wikibooks - These sprawling history records will be exported to Wikibooks (a Mediawiki Foundation side project to hold community-editable textbooks), to take advantage of the power of Mediawiki Templates.
• The YouTube Account - The Bibliotheca Anonoma has it's YouTube account, where our videos are uploaded. Users can also look through the playlists and even the subscriptions to check out what's interesting.
• Archivist Training - Unlike most forms of anthropology, you don't need to visit faraway places or spend awful amounts of money to archive Internet History. Your computer is everything you need.
  • Though you also need one more thing. You need training, on how to get your computer to slurp down sites, how to process them, and where to upload them. We'll be putting together guides about how even you can master our trade.

The Team

The Bibliotheca Anonoma has held a core team of three permanent members throughout it's existence: Antonizoon, Hagamablabla, and Amersel.

However, many, many users have come by and contributed content or worked with us, from Jkid (of the Yotsuba Society), to Sarafan of the late Wikichan, and Vyrd from vryd.net. Anyone is free to help out where you can, whenever it's convenient.

Though, one thing we've noticed is that making a Github account can be a major barrier to entry for prospective archivists. It can also be bewildering to get started. Thus, one major goal for the restructuring is to make it easier for users to connect, with a Blog and the BBS Textboard.

We will also create guides on how to train yourself to become an Archivist, using our tools like the BASC-Archiver, or just plain Wget on a virtual machine or Raspberry Pi.

Subteams

The Bibliotheca Anonoma has developed certain official task forces over it's lifetime:

• Bibliotheca Anonoma Scripting Commission (BASC, formerly StoryCorps) - This team is responsible for developing the code that makes the Bibliotheca Anonoma tick, and helps us slurp down websites safely, easily, and effortlessly.
  • Products include the websites, BASC-py4chan and the BASC-Archiver.
  • Spearheaded by Antonizoon and Daniel Oaks.
• Bibliotheca Anonoma Software Liquidation Commission (BASLQC) - A team focused on archiving and documenting the achievements of the consumer electronics modding community (Android, iPhone, TI-Inspire, IBM Wheelwriter/Model M, PSP, PS3, etc).
  • Products include the BASLQC Wiki, the PSP Wikibook, the Coreboot/Libreboot Laptop Wikibooks, and the Android Development Codex.
  • Spearheaded by Antonizoon and Amersel.

We hope to add more teams as more users come by to help out in the future.

• Bibliotheca Anonoma Anthropology Commission (BAAC) - A group of serious historians, applying modern historiography methods to internet history. JKid's research papers are a good model to follow: and publish in journals. Also works to reconstruct websites from the Internet Archive or Google Cache, in what can basically be known as
• Bibliotheca Anonoma Internet Strategic Defense Initiative (BAISDI) - Works with the Archive Team and Wikiteam to preserve existing websites or content that are important to the work of future internet historians (because some things just slip through the grasps of Internet Archive snapshots).
  • The product here would be The Anthology, which makes backups of the websites linked in question, and possibly even a private Fuuka Archiver (which won't be affected by hosting costs or traffic issues. Though the product will be made public in Internet Archive dumps, or segments ordered as CDs/DVDs/Blu-ray).

The BBS Textboard

The Bibliotheca Anonoma will be using a public anonymous textboard as the primary collaboration tool. This will replace the IRC (which doesn't show what people already said, has a minor barrier to entry, and can feel lonely when nobody's around), though we will use the IRC at irc.rizon.net #bibanon when fast public conferences are necessary.

In our experience, the best way for the community to just jump in freely and contribute or discuss is via an anonymous forum. And this way, 4chan users can feel right at home.

We'll set up a the Node.js-based http://atob.kthxb.ai on a free Red Hat Openshift app engine.

To save on hosting costs and disk space (we only get 2GBs) though, we're sticking to pure text for the actual posts. To post images, just upload them to Imgur and post the link: atob allows users to view them just by rolling over.

The structure of the board will be as follows:

• Projects - Official Project threads. Discussion for projects we're currently doing. (viewtype: gallery)
• Discussion - General discussion goes here. It's meant to be a hub for your own projects, or just a place to talk to and connect with other archivists. There hasn't really been that kind of place on the internet.
• Submission Box - Just dump a link you find interesting, and we'll check it out, or even add it to our collection. We'll be contributing links ourselves as well. This will probably also make a great place to find cool links. (viewtype: list with comment preview)
• Blog Comments - Maybe we could somehow embed the textboard into the blog for quick and easy comments. (viewtype: list with comment preview)

The Blog

The blog will be our primary announcement system for the latest events, projects, and acquisitions of the organization. Since it is essentially a news reporting system, it will probably become an important record of the things we did, and the things we saw on the internet in itself.

The Twitter Account

We'll be putting together a Twitter to announce the latest projects we're involved in, and the latest works we've collected.

You can check it out at @BAnonoma. (@bibanon was already taken by a Japanese pop band, darn).

The YouTube Account

The Bibliotheca Anonoma has a special YouTube account, where our videos are uploaded. The account also doubles as an aid to our archival efforts, where important videos are added to our playlists, and archived using youtube-dl for later.

And most of all, users can just look through our videos, our playlists, and even our subscriptions to check out what's interesting.

The Workroom Wiki

To allow anons to submit the latest stories to the Compendium, a special Workroom wiki will be built. Everyone, even the core team of the Bibliotheca Anonoma, will put together stories here so that anyone can add to it whenever they want. Project threads on the BBS can also be linked in to provide a discussion forum for contributors.

We're still debating on whether we should use a Github Wiki for this one, or migrate it to Wikibooks.

The Compendium

The Compendium will store finalized content from the Bibliotheca Anonoma in a readable format and a categorized website database.

Once a story stops running or an author disappears, their works will transferred from the Workroom Wiki and be put into The Compendium as finalized content for display.

It will also have downloadable eBooks for easy reading, perhaps even uploaded to Project Gutenburg. We'll see.

The Anthology

A subset of The Compendium is the Anthology, which is more of a database of interesting links from other fellow websites (such as the LPArchive, Danny Choo's blog posts, etc.)

A few of these sites will have a custom website backup made to the Internet Archive, just in case they collapse in the future.

Archivist Training

So you want to be an Internet Archivist? Unlike most forms of anthropology, you don't need to visit faraway places or spend awful amounts of money to archive websites. Your computer is everything you need.

Though you also need one more thing. You need training, on how to get your computer to slurp down sites, and where to upload them. We'll be putting together guides on how to do this, and wikiteam-style scripts to do so.

BASC Epimelitria

The BASC Epimelitria will be a quick and dirty Linux virtual machine (and an installation guide for people already using Linux, or those with a Raspberry Pi) that contains all the tools you need to archive sites on your own.

This is specifically designed to help JKid's life easier by saving him time. Look, he was archiving entire websites... by hand! That takes tons of dedication. Not that it was bad, because that's how he created the entire Yotsuba Society 4chan Thread Archives, but computers do things better and more quickly, so you can spend your time on greater tasks.

We will also create a special script for the BASC-Archiver library that will automatically download 4chan threads based on a certain regex. This will be useful on our own low-power archival server, perhaps to grab "best of 4chan" or "baww" on /b/.

RPi Archival Engine + Backup Media

Blu-rays are dirt cheap. $0.50 per 25GB disc. So we'll be using a ton of these to store large amounts of random data, such as 4chan threads. Though we will upload them to the Internet Archive or Stanford Digital Repository at our first opportunity.

We used to use Camcorder MiniDV tapes which store 13GBs.

One day, if we ever have enough funding, we will probably buy an LTO tape drive, so we can store 6.5TB for just $30 a tape.