Is user content a right, a treasure, a heritage, a meaningful part of the human condition? … Ultimately, this is not a new self-awareness. You re just keeping it on a hard drive instead of the old family bible. Your diary is now on a server, instead of underneath your room, where your parents throw it out.
— Jason Scott, an Internet advocate and archivist who launched the Archive Team, which steps in and saves the content of abandoned digital cities and communities. For example, the team collected and archived content from Web-hosting service GeoCities after Yahoo shut down its U.S.-based pages in 2009. The Atlantic looks at what happens when virtual worlds are abandoned or collapse, and what efforts are made to save what had grown there.
Screenshot from Yahoo
