Neat project, but some things I am wondering... What do you mean by recovering an account? I assume you don't have the password? Will people have control over their old content? Is this legal--don't the authors own the copyright of their pages?
The plan is to give people control again, but that's not a very easy problem. A number of solutions have already been suggested though, and I think that's something that can be dealt with.
Obviously, if someone does not want their content on there I'll remove it immediately, as far as I'm concerned I'm just hosting it.
And yes, of course the authors have the copyright to their pages, that's an inalienable right.
So far though, the only things I've received to that effect are people that are actively contributing their content, nobody has asked to have it removed. (And the number of 'contributors' is quite significant already (50+)).
Have you considered the ramifications of becoming a replacement for GeoCities, as opposed to just an archive of it?
(Saying "no" to this question isn't a bad thing! Sometimes the most interesting projects are a result of doing something because it's possible, and thinking about what that means later.)
Yes, I did. Not rigorously but sort of back-of-the-envelope. But I'll deal with that when the requests come in, the first stop for me now is to get complete coverage.
Then to couple the content to user accounts and to give a modicum of control back to the real owners of the content.
After that there are two possible avenues, the first one is a site where no new accounts are accepted and you can only remove or update files that are already there (mostly to save people from embarrassment).
The second option would be to open up new account creation, but that's a different kettle of fish. It would require some major development in terms of spam and abuse control and dealing with that. We have some of that for ww.com (nsfw, most of the times it is, but you never know if some 'jerk' is being an ass), so we can use that or expand it.
My first thought would be to identify a number of users as neighborhood cops.
I'm sure that will be a workable solution, but we're still a ways away from that.
The next big milestone will be complete coverage, after that we will move to more functionality.
Webcounters, webrings and so on will all be restored as far as possible.
A suggestion: if people request removal, of course remove it from the public-facing archive, but don't completely delete their pages. Keep everything around as a private archive until it's appropriate to release publicly.
Consider letters from the Civil War. Publishing them a few years after the war would have been a gross violation of someone's privacy. But now they are an invaluable primary source historians have for understanding the era.
GeoCities was the web in its infancy. We know what that was like because we remember it, even took part in it. People in 100 years will want insight into that time period as well.
